Ogre Almanac - Ogre Biology (2006)

The discussion topic for the week: Ogre Biology.  To best understand ogre society, let’s start with ogres themselves.  Beginning points of conversation:
~ Food is ever important to an ogre, so what is the ogrish diet?  How much does each ogre eat, and what percentage of his daily food comes from meat, vegetation, gnobler?  How much of the food an ogre eats is taken raw from the environment, and how much gets cooked or processed in some way?
~ From birth to death ogres are savage little beasts, but we know little of their life cycle.  How big are ogres when they are born?  How quickly do they grow?  Do they grow continuously or do they go through growth cycles?  Is it different for males and females?  How does their mental growth go along with their physical growth?  Just how big do ogres get anyways?
~ Life on the mountains is dangerous, and few ogres live to a ripe old age.  What is the ‘natural’ life span of an ogre?  How many die as infants?  How long is the life of an average bull?  An average cow?  Do Tyrants, Bruisers, and other top ogres tend to live longer than other ogres?  How about Butchers and Slaughtermasters?
~Ogres are built different than a lot of other animals… they keep all their important bits in their gut for one!  Do ogres have any other interesting biological features that are important to consider?  For example, do ogre teeth keep growing back like a shark, or is there a limited supply?  What are the temperature tolerances of an ogre?  How are ogre senses compared to humans?

I think it is safe to assume, after the write up in the army book on "what is found in an ogres belly" that most of thier food is uncooked and eaten raw, on the spot.

~How much does each ogre eat, and what percentage of his daily food comes from meat, vegetation, gnobler?

I estimate, looking at other large preditors and taking the 'higher averages' to guage the voraciousness of the ogres, that an ogre eats between 1/5th and 1/10th of his body weight each day.  The bulk (lets say 85+%) of this diet comes from meat and gnobler (more meat in good hunting times, more gnobler in bad hunting times), but if hunting is lean or if tastey vegetation is available for snacking an ogre is capable of living for an extended period of time without meat, though he won't be happy about it!

Ogre infants are rapidly growing little beasties to me, so they are probably eating nearly an adult portion regardless of their size, either in direct consumption or in extra consupmtion by females required to produce milk to feed them.

~How much of the food an ogre eats is taken raw from the environment, and how much gets cooked or processed in some way?

We know that ogres do some processing of food... butchers in large part earn their place in the tribe from it, and there is fluff talk of beer and other alchoholic goodness as part of the ogre diet.  There is also the infamous 'ogre bread', which may or may not be apocryphal.  I'd wager most of the food gets eaten raw and on the spot, ogres are not patient!  In fact, apart from perhaps alchoholic beverages, I'd guess that most food preperation is part of a feast and not part of the regular ogre diet.

~How big are ogres when they are born?

This depends on how long we set gestation of course (my model so far is about 1yr gestation, a bit long I know but I want ogres coming out big and strong to accomidate the fluff for gorgers).  Still I'd wager that an ogre whelp comes out about maybe three feet tall, and fully rotund in ogre fashion.

~How quickly do they grow?  Do they grow continuously or do they go through growth cycles?

The race to ogre adulthood has to be a fast one, ogres die at a fairly quick pace due to their harsh environment, and they are too large and (even being as dumb as they are) too neurologically complicated to say they are being born in large litters to make up for it... replacements are coming up quick behind each ogre.  I'd say growth is pretty continuous, growing from birth to near adult size (3/4 or 4/5ths adult body mass) within ten years of birth, then slowing down until they are full adult size in their early to mid teens.  This model does not change much between males and females, who are basically identical until sexual charactaristics begin developing between 10 and 12 anyways.

~ How does their mental growth go along with their physical growth? 

As a neurobiologist and student of psychology, this topic intrigued me.  We have a species who has very limited classic 'cognitive' features, but seem to be adaptive to the environment (including civilized environments) by adulthood.  I think it was in one of the developer chats ogres are talked about as 'aquiring culture as they age', which to me means 'mental progression is slow but continuous throughout life'.  Thus ogre whelps would be like puppies, little to no mental capacity and no recognition ;et alone use of language until approaching adulthood... slower developing adults may not even speak until a few years into the adult life!

Ogre psychology is, to me, incredibly instinct driven.  Ogres don't 'think' about things almost at all, no real planning or talking things over.  Language use would be to communicate needs and coordinate actions of the tribe... older ogres maybe even being more sophisticated and using language for entertainment (storytelling) or promoting their own social status (bragging about stuff), but no ogre is discussing philosophy or theology, or even thinking about such things... purely abstract thought lies essentially outside of the ogre experiance.

This idea of continually progressive ogre intellect also makes slaughtermasters and older tyrants more interesting.  Although I never see ogres as 'intelligent' (even the brightest ogre wont have a great memory and won't be doing math larger than what he can track on his fingers), a long lived tyrant or (especially) slaughtermaster would not only have a physical advantage over his peers, but a huge mental advantage as well... ogre tribes would rely alot on the leadership of older ogres to make decisions.  An old tyrant or slaughtermaster might not be 'smart' in the way that an academic human or elf might be, but would certianally rival the 'cunning' of any human.

~Just how big do ogres get anyways?

Tough to estimate from models, but maybe... 10'-12' tall, and maybe 1800+lbs as adults?

~What is the ‘natural’ life span of an ogre?

Tough to say since so few ogres will get there... I'm thinking humanish or slightly longer... like 100-120yrs?  Maybe one the RPG books will say something on the topic, I'll check when I get a chance.

~How many die as infants?  How long is the life of an average bull?  An average cow?  Do Tyrants, Bruisers, and other top ogres tend to live longer than other ogres?  How about Butchers and Slaughtermasters?

Infant mortality would have to be pretty high... ogre immune system is probably fantastic so not from disease, but even adult ogres have to fear a few of the preditors in the mountains they live in... ogre infants would be fat filled snacks to many a hunting animal.  For some reason fang weasles spring to mind as likely offenders... so I'm going to guess that around half of all ogre infants die in one way or another before reaching adulthood.  As I run a more mathmatical model on sustainable ogre communities that number might change.

No ogre probably reaches 'full adulthood' with any regularity, most dying far far earlier than my proposed maximum.  The only ogres who get close to dying of old age are probably Slaughtermasters, a few lucky and powerful Tyrants, and maybe a handful of female community leaders (I'm calling them 'crones' at the moment for my writeups, but the name is subject to change) get anywhere near that, most male ogres meeting a violent end in their 40s and 50s, females living just a bit longer into their 50s and 60s (they don't die violently nearly as much, they tend to die in childbirth).  Individually powerful (and hence socially prominent) ogres are living a few years longer by virtue of strength and protection of their tribe, so 60s for bruisers and 70s for most Tyrants (a few Tyrants living into very old age). 

Butchers and slaughtermasters probably are the best bet, as slaughtermasters don't get involved in war as often as Tyrants (they only come for huge conflicts of 3000pts or more!) and seem more likely to get away from bloody conflicts than a Tyrant might.  Plus no one is looking to kill them and take their job.  Still it is a brutal environment, so most Slaughtermasters live into their 90s at best, only a few having the honor of dying of old age in their 100s+.

~Do ogres have any other interesting biological features that are important to consider?

A few interesting, if trivial, ideas I had...
Ogre biology is so low centered, but they still have huge barrel chests.  Being so compacted in their gut, and having so much extra muscle mass up top, I begin to wonder if ogre respiration is varied.  Most animals breath with a diaphram pulling down on lungs and forcing them to inflate, but ogres don't have alot of room 'down' to move things into.  However, many animals (including humans) can 'force respiration' (breath in more than normal lung capacity) by specialized flexing of intercostal (rib) muscles.  So maybe ogre breathing isn't diaphram based at all but entirely controled through upper chest muscle contractions.  While this doesn't matter a whole lot, it would mean than an ogre's chest cavity would potentially be much more secured and it would be very difficult to 'collapse' an ogre lung.  It also means that ogre breathing would look much different than other animals breathing, being much more visible as muscle activity in the chest/biceps instead of in the 'stomach' area: that is instead of the stomach going in and out like human breathing tends to appear, ogre breathing would be expansion of the upper chest, maybe along with raising and lowering of the shoulders.

Ogre guts are also very interseting.  The dissected ogre picture looks fairly human in terms of what we can see, but ogres have a hugely varied diet.  I wonder if they have a 'chambered' intestine, with several seperate distinct chambers within the digestive tract each specializing in the breakdown of a specific type of food source.

Lastly, ogre immune systems.  A sick ogre isn't something I can imagine readily.  Of course, a weak sick ogre would get eaten by his peers, but even apart from that I can't help of thinking of ogres as being basically free of illness... this would help them eat rotten meat for one (not that much meat lays around long enough to get rotten around ogres!) but also add to the general heartyness.  Perhaps the same effects that make them resistant to chaos mutations also make them resistant to disease (resisting nurgle influance?).

~Do ogre teeth keep growing back like a shark, or is there a limited supply?

I think they keep growing back personally, they may be tough but ogres eat alot of strange and hard things, and most ogre minis have a full or nearly full compliment of teeth.  The only ogres without them I've seen are butchers, and we have fluff about them pulling them out and replacing them ritually.

~What are the temperature tolerances of an ogre? 

Ogres are huge, largely pale skinned, blubber covered animals heavily adaptive for mountain and cold weather climates.  While they arn't magically ice-loving yethee, I see ogres as being cold-weather kind of folks.  I can imagine them existing without signiciant shelter in 0-degree weather, and 'bundling up' in hides and caves for even colder winter storms.  I don't see them having the same tolerance for warm weather, they seem built to overheat too easily.  Even the reletivly mild summers of the old world would have ogres sweating profusely and irratibly uncomfortable.  I can't imagine how ogre mercenaries in Araby, or those who participated in the Lustria campaigns were!  Still we do have clear examples of ogres traveling and living in those areas, so they are capable of surviving in such warm environments, if not compfortably.

~How are ogre senses compared to humans?

This is tough, it is an important question but we don't have many clear answers from fluff.  I'm taking rough shots in the dark here, but I'd guess that ogre hearing is comprable to human, and vision is close (though not as well adapted at seeing fine details at close range, as if all ogres are far-sighted)... after all ogres are large enough and unsubtle enough that tiny things shouldn't matter too much.  Touch sense is likely somewhat less than human level, ogres have 'thick leathery skin' and are universally described as somewhat clumsy: clear signs of having little fine touch receptors.  Likewise their high T value seems to indicate a general lack of pain reception as well.

As for the others... I'm conflicted about olfactory and gustatory senses.  On the one hand, ogres have a culture partially built around eating.  On the other hand, they eat anything!  So how well developed are their senses of smell and taste?  I'm going to randomly guess that they are slightly less active than even human's comparitivly dull senses: ogres can eat anything after all and thus don't need the senses to help discriminate between 'good' and 'bad' food like humans do.

~What are normal Ogre skintones?

I know people have been doing alot of variation within their painting of ogre miniatures, and I don't want to step on people's toes with this question.  From what I have seen people paint, ogres have a full range of normal human skin-tones, plus some grey/greenish/bluish coloration patterns as well.  The few 'red' ogres I have seen are almost always linked to chaos ogres, so red skin may be a common chaos mutation?  Hair seems universally black, deep deep brown, or (in a handful of very old ogres) grey or white.

~How big are ogres when they are born?

This depends on how long we set gestation of course (my model so far is about 1yr gestation, a bit long I know but I want ogres coming out big and strong to accomidate the fluff for gorgers).  Still I'd wager that an ogre whelp comes out about maybe three feet tall, and fully rotund in ogre fashion.

the problem with this scale of baby is the ability of the mother to deliver something of that size.  Unlike other mammals that deliver large and well developed young (e.g. elephants, horses, etc.) Ogres are at a large disadvantage in that their mothers are bipedal, not quadrupeds.  The shape of the pelvis required to walk on 2 legs as a primary means of motivation also restricts the size of the baby able to pass through it.  An elastic pelvis (stretching on ligaments to accomodate a larger offspring) wouldn't work either as such a structure wouldn't be able to take the strain of the mother's frame for movement, given her assumed size and weight.

In order to deliver at all, a baby must pass through the birth canal smaller and less well developed - this is our trade off with nature, and is shared by other primates such as gorillas.  This, in turn, means a longer period of weaning for an infant, and that, in turns leads to the development of a culture that can offer a mother that time needed.  The ogres may be illiterate, but we can see the genesis of culture in their fluff from their tales, legends and pantings.  The presence of such a culture of "memes" infers the existance of an extended weaning period for the young.

Although our early birth has to do with our brain size, this is not the same with ogres, whose brain is described as being dog-like, but their heads are still massive chunks of bone and their guts, even at birth, must be difficult to pass.  I almost see an ogre labour as 2-stage in delivery (head and gut) as opposed to just the head (as for humans).  Having been present at the birth of my own 2 sons, I can honestly say I'd not like to witness the ogre version on a full stomach.

Likewise, the possible size of a mother's womb and the effect of a full womb on the gut and internal organs must be assessed.

An ogre's gut is described as being lined with muscles and incredibly tough, with the all the important internal organs being lodged behind it for protection.  How can a womb expand in such tight constraints as it is less likely to be able to push forwards as in other bipeds?  I think that the answer is that it does a little (hormones secreted during pregnancy in humans allow for this muscle relaxation), but in ogres this will cause some fairly serious digestion problems as the muxcles of the gut wall are used to crush and digest food that has been swallowed.

other than that, the ogres' unique physiology will restrict the size of any baby carried to term.

On the length of pregnancy, ogres are definatly predators, and large ones. No preadtor species in our world, even something of comparable size and nastiness like a polar bear - the largest land-mammal preadator - has a term that long, you just run too many risks on losing both mother and baby to starvation and othr predators.  It could be argued that the ogre culture compensates for this or has evolved to fit this need, but such arrangements generally take 1000's of year to form, so something else is probably going on.

polar bear gestation, lasts from May to January (or thereabouts) - or something comparable to our own, and they come out squirrel-sized (about 21 oz).  Now from the fluff, an ogre must come our a little more ready to defend itself from others (litter mates wanting an easy snack, for example) and so I suggest that an ogre cub is born, after roughly the same gestation period but about 2 feet long, with a full set of teeth and eyes open - but not necessarily ready to focus (milk is still given), weighing in at about the size of a human 8 month old baby (about 18-20 lbs).  That would be painful to deliver, but survivable given an ores increased size, muscle power and toughness.


on teeth:

we do have recorded fluff on ogres removing their teeth to hammer in lumps of rock, and butcher's having special teeth as replacements or to try and crush something particularly tough (like granite) - this points to ogre teeth not regenerating like those of rodents, but being more like us, a 1 or 2 time thing.  I do think however, and this is just me, that a 3rd set of adult teeth is not beyond the realm of possibility given their head/bone structure and size and their natural ib-built desire to eat anything in their paths.

The presence of such a culture of "memes" infers the existance of an extended weaning period for the young.

In terms of psychological development, I see ogres as being pretty bestial and non-sentient until emerging into adulthood, little ogres running on instinct putting every ounce of resource into developing a big body, the brain can wait till the huge growth process is finished.  Thus ogre babies probably have comparitivly small heads: mouth and jaw intact of course but brainpan can be signicantly smaller if they are running at a primarily limbic level until later in neurological development.  Ogres get there memetic transfers as young adults when they 'awake' into sentience.

Likewise, the possible size of a mother's womb and the effect of a full womb on the gut and internal organs must be assessed.

Yeah I struggled with this too... an ogre female must be even more 'bottom heavy' then a traditional ogre, maybe with an overhanding gut 'pouch' that hangs between the legs during pregnancy?  That would reduce mobility a bit, and maybe even change movement into a more rolling gait than an fully upright walking stance... but it would accomidate an infant and supporting structures, especially if we move down to 2' birth size (which would be proportianally comprable to human).

No preadtor species in our world, even something of comparable size and nastiness like a polar bear - the largest land-mammal preadator - has a term that long,

The model animal I have been using is the Walrus, which is a predator with some omnivorous tendancies (like our ogres) that has an 11 month gestation period and gives birth to infants 4' in length.  Now I know there are huge differences in a water-born mammal and a biped that have to be accounted for, but I don't think the problems are insurmountable.  Make ogre females more pear shaped to widen out their bottom half (to support an infant and give a wider birth canal), propose a more 'plop out' relaxation method for birth rather than a forced 'push out' method favored by humans... and give the poor girls a year recovery time between births.  The most common form of death I see for ogre females is strain related to child-bearing: either starvation while carrying the child or complications of the birth itself.

Of course then I have to justify why the female ogre maneater looks more-or-less like the male ogre...

Now from the fluff, an ogre must come our a little more ready to defend itself from others

From fluff, an infant ogre is recognized as being gutless at birth and is cast into the caves underlying camp, where a fair number (about two per ogre army it seems... *grin*) manage to survive... this is the primary struggling block for me in 'dumbing down' ogre infants too much: they have to be able to at least theoretically survive without any support on their own very shortly after birth in a very hostile environment.

I'd say Ogre diet is mostly based on location and availibility. If the local Hunter gets a Greta Mammoth, it;s mammoth for a while. If food is scarce, gnoblars, fangweasels, brsitlehogs, veggies, and inatimate objects. As for location, Ogres living in higher elevations may eat more ice elk and rhinoxen and cave bears while lower living Ogres may eat more gnoblars and hu man traders. Northern Ogres probably eat marauders and spawns. Ogres probably mature very quickly and have a large growing period until fully developed as adult bulls, the more dominant males continuing to grow to slighly larger sizes. The lie expextancy for Ogres is obviously at least 200ish if they stay healthy and don't get killed because somewhere there is fluff on an Ogre Tyrant being 180ish and they would be overthrown if they got too old to rule. However, they probably don't have signs of aging much until very soon pre death as dwarfs do. Tyrants and butchers may live longer due to better health or being stronger/ less likely to be killed, especially butchers since I see a butcher per tribe, making them too valuable a commodity to lose. As for senses, sight is about par to human, hearing is probably worse due to the volume of Ogre's voices, taste and smell less than human since they'll eat anything, and...that's about it.

I was asked to post this here (a debate that I am having about the texture of Ogre skin).  I will copy and paste my topic from the Feeding Grounds here:

"Hi there,

This is me at my most pedantic!  Please bear with me... on the official UK website you have a description of Golgfag's Ogres.  It says that "Ogre skin is gnarled and warty" (not very fetching!).  I was wondering if this is just left over from previous ogre fluff (before they created Ogre Kingdoms) or if this is an accurate description (as far as we know) of what Ogre skin is like.  The only reason I ask is because it says nothing of the sort - just that the skin is tough and thick in the army book and rule book, and that I personally don't like the description as described of Golgfag's Ogres.  It also mentions that he was the ugliest Ogre ever to come from the Northern Wastes, so maybe this explains it.  I was just wondering if this fluff still stands as canon, not that it particularly matters, seeing as Ogres got a complete revamp in every regard recently.  Cheers."

GreenDragon replied:

"Nah, I'm reckoning it's just Golfags, I'd say Ogre skin is more Rough and leathery, but maybe you should post this in this weeks almanac section on Ogre biology?"

Link: http://www.ogrestronghold.com/forum/index.php?topic=2436.0

Now my problem is is that this is not how I perceive ogre skin to be like!  It clearly says in the rule book and in the army book that ogre skin is simply "tough and thick", and compares it as a similar texture to leather armour.  I don't like the thought of my ogres going round with skin as described here on the warhammer website ("gnarled and warty"): http://uk.games-workshop.com/dogsofwar/miniature-gallery/12/ and believe this to be an error.

What are everyone else's opinions?  How should the texture of the ogres' skin go down in our almanac?  I say that it should stay simply as "tough, thick, and leathery", and that the other description of Golgfag's Ogres only applies to his specific ogres.

The Gorger Gene.

Gorgers - an uncommon, but hardly unknown phenomenon in ogre biology of a "gutless" offspring.  We know these cubs are thrown into mawpits as soon as discovered, but is the lack of a paunch the only physiological difference between the gorgers and the ogres? 

What effect is there on the gorger's biology of not having a gut - which to the ogres is almost an organ in itself - and how do such mutations come about?

First, lets rule out warpstone.  There is no official source that lends any credence to the theory that tribes living in high-warp areas have more or less gorgers/head of population than those who don't - gorgers seem to occur throughout the entire ogre population and in each tribe.

This points to the gorgers as being either a natural genetic mutation, or caused by a magical mutation to the entire ogre race at some point in the past.  I think you can see where I am heading with this - did the appearance of the great maw cause the gorger mutation?  This could have happened either as a result of a magical after-effect of the explosion on the ogres themselves (less likely as the gorger gene seems to still be "rare" in each tribe), or did it come about as a result of the gene-pool depletion following the mass cull of the ogre race.

We have no evidence one way or the other for the existance of gorgers before the Maw, but I must state that I think it feels right that this event was the trigger of the mutation.  After all, a mutation for a larger, nastier eating machine seems fairly useful to a race that needs to consume a lot and simply needs to get better at it than those others predators around it (i.e. other ogres).

So how do Gorgers differ from other ogres?  From the models, the head size, and especially the jaw structure is different, possibly coming from a need of the gorgers to bite and chew more as they lack the guts to help digestion through muscle contraction.

Also different, possibly is the gorger sense of smell and its ability to follow the scent of blood in the air.  This has been likened to the ability of sharks.  This points to either a radically different olfactory system, which would be useful, but possibly hard to engineer - or to a development of a naturally goiod sense of smell that ogres possess.  This is more likely and would suggest that the ogre sense of smell is better than we thought.

the additional strength and toughness of the gorgers can be attributed to their "upbringing" such as it is, and the fact that any survuve does suggest that young ogres tend to grow up quickly.

on the "instinct-driven" nature of the young:

since the ogres have manhood rituals, games and art (such as it is), this all suggests a period of childhood for young ogres in which they are consious and sentient.  Even puppies have characters and personalities from a very early age, so I'm kind of against the idea of an "awakening" at some later stage.  Ogre childhood may be short and brutal, but I'd say it probably exists in some form.

Golgfag's ogre crew came from an older edition and barely even look like the ogres we know today... larger heads, less prominent guts, more clothes, can't have gut magic cast on him, no bull charge... he and his ogre crew came from the 'northern wastes' too, not the mountains of mourn.  Personally I think he (and thus his description) is just a product of a different 'vision' of ogres in a past edition that should be retconned away. 

BUT if we are trying to go with the fluff as best we can: Golfag comes from the northern wastes and looks weird eh?  He is obviously a chaos ogre!



I mean just look at these guys, although ogres are resistant to the effects of Chaos, it obviously changes up ogre body structure from the ogres we know and love.

What effect is there on the gorger's biology of not having a gut

The effects of such a huge biological shift must be dramatic indeed.  Being less fatty they would be less resistant to the cold weather.... they would be unable to digest food as well, and as you mentioned would need to reduce it before swallowing much more than an ogre who could grind his food up in his stomach.  Not that this is the only part of the mutation.  Heads are larger, tusks more prominent... claws larger, arms longer, posture more bent over, with evidence of knuckle walking.  Such gross yet still functional mutations almost never happen in nature; which leads me to believe the gorger mutation is magical in nature somehow. 

However, there are a few strange instances where there are gross structural changes resultant from a mutation that are viable adult species.  The key is that the mutation must effect only one GENE, and that gene has to have a systemic yet harmonious effect on the whole organism.  In real world examples, the only way this is known to happen is on genes that control maturation and development.  That is to say, there are aquatic amphibeans that are just tadpoles that never turned into salamanders or frogs (and in fact under hormone therapy CAN turn into salamanders or frogs) but retain the ability to reproduce (as maturation of sexual capacity is being controlled by another process).  Likewise there are a few insects that never leave the larval stage.

How would this effect ogres then?  There isn't a stage where ogres 'look' like gorgers is there?  Ah but there is a possibility that ogre biology pre-birth (neo-natally) is gorger-like, and organs shift downwards through the development process along side other biological changes.

There is a sort of half-assed principal in evolutionary biology that is phrased as 'Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny'.  It isn't a strong principal, but in short it means that a developing fetus in some ways mirrors the evolutionary specieisation 'steps' that brought it to the current animal.  It is a idea that is kind of catchy, but one has to be careful how far you take it... but it is still true that for example a developing human fetus is kind of non-vertabrete like at one stage of development, kind of fish like at another stage of development, kind of amphibean like... and so on.

Thus the idea of the gorger being a pedoform mutation also means it could be kind of an 'evolutionary throwback' (very unscientific term but we'll work with it) of ogres as they existed earlier in development.  Now I know, evolution didn't 'really' happen on the warhammer world: The Old Ones just kind of intelligent designed stuff as they went along.  That gets into fantasy theology a bit much for me AND it is irrelevant given where my argument is going next...

did the appearance of the great maw cause the gorger mutation?

A good theory, and one I support if I can't gain support for my more radical theory.  The maw is central to ogre life, it changed ogre psychology at the very least (ogres describe their 'hunger' as being born from the Maw).  What if the coming of the maw also changed gross biology... not in the sense of creating the gorger mutation, but in the sense of creating the 'ogre' mutation from a base gorger bodytype?  Afterall gorgers are a better 'fit' to what the rest of the other speices of the world appear like.  Gorgers are unaffected by gut magic: they are born as ogres but (for reasons we will debate when we talk about gut magic in a couple of weeks) they are not effected by gut magic... like chaos ogres incidentally, but that is again another topic.  In whatever mechanism it is working through, Gut magic is the influence of the Maw and not being able to be effected by it shows a potential removal of the Maw's effects, and I propose it is a removal of the Maw physically as well as spiritually.

The ogre body-form then could be built to support the hunger of the Maw... the Maw either is or was caused by Warpstone, and if it can turn Rats into Skaven it can certianally turn Gorgers into Ogres.  Gorgers are reviled from birth... the 'Mawness' in an ogre can sense the differentness of the offspring immediately.

Psychological differences between Gorgers and Ogres would be therefore 'nurture' not 'nature' by the model I am proposing.  Any ogre that was raised without a tribe and any societal contact would end up a instinct driven killing machine, but for all their nastyness Ogres are a very social community that takes care of it's young fairly well for the environment it is in: the only Ogres that 'get away' are those cast away purposefully for what amounts to instinctual/religious reasons.

of the gene-pool depletion following the mass cull of the ogre race.

A good model to work from in any case, I'd guess ogres are very genetically homogenious... that is genetically speaking ogres are very like eachother compared to other species, there isn't a huge spread of genetic variation.  Afterall, almost all the ogres were destroyed by the coming of the Maw, and the only ones that seemed to have survived were those living in a very small area in the North-West enclave of their race furthest from the Maw that ALSO had the hardiness to survive a long migration.  Perhaps not as close as, say, cheetah are in the real world (who are almost functional twins to one another) or dandilions (of which there are only really four or five genetically unique individuals world wide) but still without much diversity, even less than the relevitly homogenious humans.

This is more likely and would suggest that the ogre sense of smell is better than we thought.

I agree, I'll adjust my model to place a reliance on scent as a primary sense.  Gorgers will have a better sense of scent than the average ogre due to reliance on it in their lightless environment, but even the average ogre will have a very keen (if not particularly discriminating) sense of smell.

Even puppies have characters and personalities from a very early age, so I'm kind of against the idea of an "awakening" at some later stage.

I'm not saying that ogres are not intelligent in some fashion at birth, but that they spend a great deal of time in a pre-verbal stage of neural development.  Afterall even human infants arn't born in a state of what we would concider 'self-aware', I'm just prolonging that period by a bit.  An accomidating model to go alongside the adulthood rituals then... maybe the first five years of ogre life are virtually non-verbal and entirely instinct driven, neural development taking place but primarily limbically and basally, not so much cortically.  The next five years or so could start cortical development, along the same speed or slightly slower than the human rate... thus a newly adult ogre would have the reasoning and language skills of about a three year old, which would continue slowly throughout adult life.  My work in special education has allowed me to work with many adult students who functionally maintain that level of reasoning and communication ability well into adulthood and yet are still social, hold assisted jobs, etc.

The attempt I was trying to build with ogre psycholocial development was in differentiating it from being simply unintelligent humans.  Humans develop neurologically through fits and starts: we start out neonatally and in our first year spending a huge amount of resources developing our brains, and then we slow down quite a bit... going through fits and starts of pruning and localized development and eventually reaching an 'end state' where most gross development has stopped in our late 20s/early 30s.  For ogres, I was trying to build a gradual model instead: most of an ogre's resources go to buliding a body first, the details of the brain come second and gradually throughout life.  This potentially leads long lived ogre community leaders to be very 'intelligent' in a cunning/instinctual kind of way.

Incidentally someone mentioned an ogre Tyrant living to be 180?  I flipped through the main book and didn't see the reference, can you give me a page number?  Some official sources on that would make a development timeline a whole lot easier.

I hope it is fine to post a response here, if not forgive me and please move as necessary.

…  Personally I think he (and thus his description) is just a product of a different 'vision' of ogres in a past edition that should be retconned away. 

BUT if we are trying to go with the fluff as best we can: Golfag comes from the northern wastes and looks weird eh?  He is obviously a chaos ogre!

Yes, Golgfag is the product of a prior concept that was not fully explored with the new ogre army design and concept. Golgfag is a RoR renown and of course does not fit the current vision of this ogre line, but to classify him as a chaos ogre is out of line . Past fluff written in the 5th edition Dogs of War army book has nothing regarding Golgfag as a product of chaos, just ugly sculpting. Golgfag is listed as a “Gut of Legend” which makes me believe he will eventually be addressed with his own army list, combining Dogs of War and Ogres, and will include the new rules of Gut Magic and the bull charge. It is probably going to take several years, ala Tehenhauin’s Red Host list.

Golgfag is full blooded ogre and for this almanac (great idea by the way) he should be given full accord as an ogre.

Golgfag's ogre crew came from an older edition and barely even look like the ogres we know today... larger heads, less prominent guts, more clothes, can't have gut magic cast on him, no bull charge... he and his ogre crew came from the 'northern wastes' too, not the mountains of mourn.  Personally I think he (and thus his description) is just a product of a different 'vision' of ogres in a past edition that should be retconned away. 

BUT if we are trying to go with the fluff as best we can: Golfag comes from the northern wastes and looks weird eh?  He is obviously a chaos ogre!



I mean just look at these guys, although ogres are resistant to the effects of Chaos, it obviously changes up ogre body structure from the ogres we know and love.

So would you say that that was a description for the ogres of the North, and not ones from the Mountains of Mourn then?  I know Golgfag is an ogre legend, but he and his band are supposed to be the ugliest ones, so isn't that indication that the description is for him and his ogres specifically?

OK, how about this? Golgfag and his Ogres are a new subspecies of Ogre, that have combined the genetic alterations caused by their life in the Northern Wastes with 'untainted' Ogres from the Mountains of Mourn. Golgfag's Tribe roams the north, acting as a go-between the Tribes of the Mountains and the various races they have dealings with e.g. Chaos Dwarfs. This position is monopolised by Golgfag's Tribe because they are the only Ogres able to communicate with the Hung tribes, as the Hung do not speak 'Common'. Just my ideas on fluff.

I like that - just as long as there is a difference between them and the "untainted" ogres, as you call them, then that's fine by me!

I would like to expand on another variation apart from Gorgers: Chaos Ogres.
Firstly: What do we know?
Ogres, as brutish, heartless killing machines don't really care who they work for as long as they are paid. Also, because of their aforementioned attributes, the followers of the Chaos Gods view them as worthy of fighting alongside them. Now, I believe that in 'Beasts of Chaos' Chaos Ogres are a Special Choice. If so, they are reasonably numerous.
Secondly: How do Ogres become Chaos Ogres?
It is my opinion that Chaos Ogres are the descendants of Ogre Tribes expelled from the Mountains of Mourn when their territories were annexed by more powerful times in the various inter-Tribal conflicts. Due to their biology seeming to prefer a chilly environment they migrated north. Most likely, they will have created territories for themselves along the border of the Chaos Wastes because the prey there will be less monstrous and slimy as it is farther north. Ogres are resistant to Chaos magic, so it will have taken some time, but eventually, the Tribe will begin showing mutations. Along with these will be a compulsion to migrate northwards, essentially the Chaos Gods (most likely Khorne) or their servants to manipulate the Ogres so that they become fully under their control. As they travel deeper into the Chaos Wastes, the increased exposure of Chaos magic and the increasing of the taint in their diet, the Tribe will fully mutate.  These mutations will display the favour the Gods show in them, and combined with their combat prowess the Hung Tribes will not be hostile towards them. From here, either the Ogres merge with a Hung Tribe, treating the humans rather like Gnoblars, or develop independance. It is possible that the Chaos Gods entice gifts for the Ogres, especially that of Daemonhood. The possibility of supernatural power would definitely intrigue an Ogre Tyrant.

How does Chaos affect Ogre Biology?
Firstly there are the physical attachtments, i.e. extra arms, heads etc.These will be prized as they accentuate fighting and eating prowess. The effects this would have is either an expansion of the torso (to make room for the arms) or a widening of the shoulders (to make room for the head). This would reduce gut size as the contents of it would be spread wider. Fur is also a likely mutation, and one that would again reduce gut size as there would be less need for blubber. Tentacles and the warping of forms so that they resemble those of beasts I would consider less likely, though it is possible that the Ogres would begin to be what they eat. Another change would be that Gut magic would slowly disappear, replaced by the basic rudiments of Chaos Sorcery, though, due to the majority of Ogres becoming Khornate, this is not common. A final change could be increased brainpower, most likely in one of those few occasions when an Ogre becomes Tzeentchian. This would result in a larger head. A Tzeentch Ogre warleader would be a terrible thing, as it would have the intelligence of a human, or perhaps even greater, and all the might and skill of an Ogre.

Ogre skin texture and complexion could be mentioned, as could details on the different mutations of ogres.

The questions on mutations and everything are very interesting I think.

In the main Almanac thread (not the right one for the discussion) we talked about this a little.  It is relevant for the Ogre Biology section so I will post the link here:  http://www.ogrestronghold.com/forum/index.php?topic=2432.0

Soz, I'm a little rushed. I need to go through all the new posts since Friday.

I can't find it exactly, but it says under the Tyrant section a Tyrant was Tyrant of a tribe for over 90 years. Assuming ogres take about 20 years to mature, another 10+ fighting for the tribe, a couple decades of fighting as a mercenary (says they can usually fight as mercenaries for several decades before reaching their peak...can't find source again) puts the ogre at being at least 60ish before challenging the Tyrant for leadership, especially since a certain status in the tribe must be earned before they gain the right to challenge the Tyrant. This would prove that Ogres can live into mid to late 100's at least, probably to 200ish.

essentially the Chaos Gods (most likely Khorne) or their servants to manipulate the Ogres so that they become fully under their control

I actually see most Chaos ogres as following Chaos Undivided in some fashion, kind of being 'chaos tainted' and having their Maw-driven instincts subverted by the effects of Chaos without particularly following one Chaos god or another.

From here, either the Ogres merge with a Hung Tribe, treating the humans rather like Gnoblars, or develop independance.

In the Chaos book, Chaos ogres are described as having their own tribes and language, so I am more inclined to believe that Chaos ogres live lives pretty similar to other ogres, they just live more 'northernly' and tend to fight for Chaos armies.  There are probably some fine lines as you get north, with tribes having appearing more and more like Chaos Ogres the more north you travel until at some undefined point the Ogres no longer follow the Maw and instead follow Chaos.  Even 'normal' tribes living in the more northern parts of the Mountains of Mourn probably have a few members that are built like Chaos Ogres.

How does Chaos affect Ogre Biology?

Your suppositions are pretty good, and until we have a rules change that says 'Chaos Ogres get Bullcharge and Gut-magic', that is the best explanitory reason why Chaos Ogres don't follow the same rules as other ogres.

How is this...
The line between Chaos Ogre and traditional Ogre is a fine one... many tribes contain members that would be difficult to categorize one way or another, or even contain members of both sub-species.  The formal division of the race is not the gross biological changes (the lessening of the gut, the enlargement of teeth and jaw, and change in skin coloration is common, though more extreme mutations do exist), but rather the shift is concidered a spiritual one: as soon as gut magic no longer is functional on an Ogre, the tribe's butcher will declare that the that ogre is 'No longer a child of the Maw'.

The reaction varies from tribe to tribe: some attacking and eating the Chaos Ogre, some casting them into the pits like the gorgers they increasingly resemble, and some allowing them to stay as tribe members without further incident.  However, even Chaos Ogres that are allowed to stay in the tribe lose much status: the ever shrinking gut is an increasing sign of weakness and shame.  Most ogres that become Chaos tainted in this way abandon their tribes and move northward to join the tribes of fully Chaos Ogres.

Most Chaos Ogres follow what would functionally be Chaos Undivided.  Most Chaos Ogres wouldn't consider themselves following anyone, or indeed concider themselves as much different from any other ogre.  A few tribes will have formally accepted Chaos, or have twisted their faith in the Maw to think of it as a lesser Chaos God.  Most tribes however just accumulate enough Chaos taint that it feels natural to fight in the armies of Chaos they accompany.

A common second choice would be following Khorne.  Fighting and violence is something an ogre can understand.  While most ogres fight for fun, food, and status Chaos Ogres following Khorne love violence and war for it's own sake.  Most Chaos Ogres joining the ranks of Chaos armies are followers of Khorne, and will fight for that army regardless of which God is championing the effort.  Common mutations include the reddening of the skin, development of hornes, extreme and distorted increases in musculature, and extra arms, often in full matching sets of two instead of individually.

All the other Chaos Gods are rarely followed, each having one or two tribes at most that follow them and a handful of individual Chaos Ogres.  Chaos has little time for Tzeentch, unable to comprehend any but their instinctually driven Gut-Magic (which they lose access to by becoming Chaos Ogres) much of the drive to follow the master of Magic is gone.  Most common adherants are butchers who lost their abilities when they lost their connection with the Maw and seek to regain some of their lost abilities.  Chaos Ogres following Tzeentch are shockingly intelligent beasts.  While they are still not good at math and reason compared to a human, their instinct and cunning reaches levels comprable to the most devious humans.  Common mutations include bluish skin, often with strange patterns in other colors swirled across their bodies.  Extra eyes are also common, as are extra heads.  Rumors of Ogres following Tzeentch with feathery wings persist but no evidence of their existance has been found.

Ogres have increadible immune systems, and rarely get sick.  Thus respect for the lord of decay and plague is even more rare.  However, the great corpulance of Greater Nurgle demons is often awe inspiring to some ogres and sight of one can sometimes drive ogres into Nurgle's service.  Additionally, the few ogres who do manage to get plague ridden may turn to Nurgle for succor.  Unlike other Chaos Ogres, whom often lose their guts, Nurgle tainted Chaos Ogres get even larger.  They lose their fine muscle tone but gain roll after roll of additional fat, often in tumerous growths.  Skin, if it does not begin rotting, still takes on a sickly greenish palor.  Becoming cyclopean is also somewhat common.  The massive bodies of ogres, once they become festered, become great havens for flys and other insects and thus an ogre long in the service of Nurgle is often constantly surrounded by an enormous cloud of flies.

Some find it strange that Slaanesh is the least followed of the Chaos Gods by ogres.  There are two factors that contribute to this.  Firstly, ogres as a species offer little that a Slaanesh demon would find worthy of corrupting.  Even the most attractive ogre is a horrible beast with little ability to seduce others.  Likewise an ogre's own pleasures are simple: mating and eating, and a little killing... hardly much to work with.  The other factor limiting the amount of Ogres which follow Slaanesh is the danger to the demon or champion attemting to bring them into the fold.  Ogres, when stimulated through the mind effects Slaaneshi demons often use that bring pleasure in other species often just make an ogre hungry: more than one follower of Slaanesh has been eaten by the tribe of ogres they attempt to recruit!  The few ogre followers of Slaanesh often have pinkish or whiteish skin.  Tentacles are common, as are extra arms ending in claws like those of a Daemonette.  Their form is often incredibly skinny for an ogre.  Enlargement of the Jaw and the growth of an enormously long and prehensile tongue is very common as well.  Most ogre followers of Slaanesh give into the only form of hedonism an ogre can really understand, and become huge gluttons seeking finer and more exotic meals to excite their palette.

I have a question to throw out there about ogre eating mechanisms... ogre mouths and throats don't seem all that large, and yet in the stomach dissection we see a fairly intact horse skull and shoulder blades in there!  Are ogre mouths and throats highly distortable, able to open incredibly wide to accept some of the larger food stuffs or what?

I just love the ideas so far of having female ogres bottom heavy. It kinda brings to mind how early cultures worshipped/loved bigger women for the whole ease of fertility thing. I tend to think female ogres would look a lot like that "statue of Wilendorf" Despite my wanting to sing "I like big butts and I cannot lie", I was wondering if perhaps ogre whelps, like humans, instead of being born with a big, bony blocky head, are born with more cartilage then bone. In humans babies have a "molara", or soft spot, that actually lets the head of the child be compressed, in some  extreme cases, even stretching to the point that it makes the children, quite literally, cone heads. The head does fold back afterwards and no harm is done. If ogre babies have soft bones and heads, perhaps the female maneater model makes more sense in not looking like a big beautiful women fashion model.

For ogre digestion, I beleive that ogres are so healthy/able to digest anything is the acidity of their stomach. Human stomach PH is around two, I'm gonna say that ogre stomachs are even lower, this would be mean that any parasites ingested by ogres would die unable to survive, and even bacteria commanly found in rotting meat would be digested easily. It does make me wonder if many ogres are grumpy because they have perpetual stomach ulcers though.

For your latest queation pauncho, on ogre's mouths stretching...I'm gonna say that there horsey in the ogres gut was put back together by the imperial corener. Even if such an animal were swallowed whole, the fact that it was digested down to the bones would mean the softer tissues that would hold it together, like ligaments, would be all gone. I can easily see an ogre slurping down a dismembered arm, or someone's head, but whole bodies are a bit more difficult. In addition, if they were to swallow prey whole, they would not need just stretchy jaws, but they would need a expandable glottis to breath while swallowing something that large. A snake, which is the designer big mouth animal, still takes around thirty minutes or more to gulp prey, and so actually will stick the opening of it's lungs outside the mouth so it doesn't choke to death.

I also agree that a lot of ogre whelps die before growing up. If gnoblars are constantly being sat on, I imagine the same thing happening to ogre whelps. I'm also not above the females killing the whelps themselves, in great ape tribes often the young are literally killed and eaten by jealus females not wanting their competitor's genes in the mix. In lean times, I also can see ogre females eating their own young to survive, better them then a baby that may or may not grow up!

I agree with Strikegore about the extent of the mouth. But the biology of the Ogre mouth is subject to inquiry. In the Army Book it implies that Ogres are capable of biting through steel, and chewing rocks. This means either Ogre teeth have great regenerative properties, or are far harder than human teeth. As we have already discussed the unlikelihood that Ogres have an ability to endlessly regrow teeth (though I think it is likely that as well as losing their milk teeth, they have a second shedding when they reach their 80s-100s, in order to repair the damage done over the previous years), this leads us to the conclusion that their teeth are made of a harder material than bone. Pauncho, if you know of such a natural substance please inform me. Also, the insides of their mouths must be tougher than ours so that they can eat the aforementioned substance without wounding themselves in the process. I propose that the skin on the inside of their mouths is as hard and leathery as the skin on their bodies and so is the tongue. The surface of these is coated with a slimy mucus that both acts as saliva and a lubricant allowing even the most indigestible of substances to be swallowed.

Pauncho, if you know of such a natural substance please inform me.

I could make some guesses and certianally ogre teeth must be incredibly tough, but honestly I think we can solve some of the problems by going another direction... ogre bones are layered oddly in a way that makes them hard to shatter, functional when broken, and (I would guess since the best bet is that bone generating cells, IE Osteocytes, exist between those layers) capable of healing well while still under use.  If teeth are constructed the same way, then they could be easily broken somewhat regularly and 'heal' in ways our teeth can't.  Good for a species without alot of cranial space to be growing backup teeth yet will still damage them somewhat regularly.

Still we need something super tough to have the teeth formed out of... from what is described I'd bet ogres do alot of their mechanical food grinding in their stomach, but we still need something able to take off huge chunks of super hard stuff.  I'll think about a good natural solution, but if I don't come up with something I think a statement about their hardness will fulfill our fantasy-biology.

If ogre babies have soft bones and heads

I'm sure they are, it is the big gut that is a problem to birth 

I'm gonna say that ogre stomachs are even lower

Ogres eat such a variety of foods, their digestion process has to be multi-step, with many different chemicals going along side incredibly powerful mechanical grinding.  A very very low stomach PH is a good start.  I can imagine alchemists love getting ahold of ogre stomach acid for their purposes.  Got a good chemical in mind to replace/supplement HCl?

It does make me wonder if many ogres are grumpy because they have perpetual stomach ulcers though.

Nah, ogres are eating machines... their life and biology is based around that beutiful stomach.  It is probably one of the most impervious parts of the ogre body, resistant not only to physical damage but all manner of chemical reactions.  In fact, the only thing an alchemist may love more than ogre acid is a good  ogre stomach to store chemicals in!

I'm gonna say that there horsey in the ogres gut was put back together by the imperial corener.

It could be that the sketch was... exagerated or embellished... but if taken at face value that is a pretty intact skull and, even more frightening to me, a fully intact shoulder blade.  That is a HUGE load to swollow, definetly larger than a human head in width.  I'm not proposing an ogre eat a whole horse at once, but we would have to make some accomidations to get a big horse shoulder with some meat attached into that litte mouth...

they would need a expandable glottis to breath while swallowing something that large.

If the air passage was protected by a nice boney cartillage sheath that prevented it from being pinched off, and the mouth is very sealable from the breathing system by a tight cartillage valve (the frogs that keep tadpoles in their mouth have a system like that, presumably to not inhale children)... the mouth and neck wouldn't have to be TOO expandable to choke down something fairly large.  The very funny image of an ogre spending a few days with a head stuck in his throat springs to mind.  Also, the snake information is interesting... do you think it would be possible to instead of slowly working things into an ogres stomach the ogre might employ a more 'swollow in one big gulp things that start plugging up the pipe' method to speed the process up?  That is, a throat big enough to accomidate anything the mouth can hold (plus a little more for what is attached to a big bite outside the mouth)?  After all, the ogre has a much bigger and well-prepared stomach to suddenly accomidate such an increased load than the snake does.

I also can see ogre females eating their own young to survive, better them then a baby that may or may not grow up!

I've been working out female ogre culture in my head a bit... and that fits right in there.  Females probably eat their own young for a variety of reasons... times of low food, the whelp is weaker than his peers, he is an obnoxious brat, or for an instinctual level of population control if too many whelps are about ready to mature in a way the tribe cannot handle.

Hmmm...I've been looking up the kinds of animals that eat their prey in one gulp to see what kinda mechanics could work for a horse eating ogre. I walk by the mounted patrol police forces on my way to work in tow, and lemme tell you, those horses are big.

The interesting thing with the snakes is that in order to open their mouths that wide, they have given up jaw strength. It's interesting to note that in snakes, its a general rule that the more venom a snake has, the weaker its bite, but the bigger objects it can swallow. Snakes "dangle" their jaws from their skull, but to do that, they have weaker, longer muscles holding them...a snake bite is poisoness, but you never really hear about snakes ripping off hunks of flesh like ogres can. They can't. Their mouths are incredibly weak.

But you are right, that's a huge horse skull. I'm going to hazard a guess and say ogres are more like a certain frog then snakes. Behold, the Argentian horned frog! http://www.livingunderworld.org/gallery/photos/anura/leptodactylidae/ceratophrys/ornata/ceratophrys_ornata_anon.jpg

This ogre of the anphibian world can swallow objects up to 85% of its size, and will try and swallow things over it's own size (although it chokes and dies) XD It's a big bloated stomach with a mouth attached. It has a ferocious bite, able to snap the back of rats, which are a common prey fed to it. It can swallow these huge things not because it has foldable jaws, but because it has a huge mouth and virtual no neck. When a frog swallows prey, it doesn't have a tight, constricted throaght like ours, surounded by muscles that force the food down. At the bottom jaw, instead of skin underneath it to hold the tongue like in humans, it just drops off in a pouch that leads right into the gullet.

The frog has no throat muscles, and instead pushes food down by retracting it's eyes into it's throaght. Ogres obviously, would look rather stupid with eyes sinking into their faces, so I suggest that that entire ogre throat, thich as it is, is mostly hollow and instead of a tube of a throat like in humans, almost the entire neck is a way down to the stomach, and food is moved along by slurping (your one big gulp Pauncho. ^^) and movement of the entire ogre neck, instead of just the esaphogus. As seen on the ogre bellower model, ogres have pretty expansive cheeks, so although their mouths may be small looking, with no bottom to their lower jaw and with huge cheeks they could slip something in.

I see there's been a lot of talk on ogre teeth too, on whether they grow in sets like a shark or pulled out permanently like in butchers. Gnoblars supposedly collect ogre teeth that have fallen out, but it doesn't seem like ogre teeth regrow, as otherwise a butcher would be constantly pulling out ingrowing teeth. Could perhaps ogres have teeth like rodents? They grow continuosly throught life, getting longer all the time. If you pull out a rodent tooth, it stops growing, but otherwise it doesn't matter how many hard objects you eat. This may explain why ogres bother with chewing metal and rocks at all: like rodents, they need to wear their teeth down to a proper size. The only animal interesting that lives in the real world that can chew through metal is the norwegian rat, courtasy of it's constantly growing teeth. They don't need to be diamond hard, they just have to keep growing.

For different stomach acids....actually, beleive it or not, HCL seems to work fine with me. Human PH is normal at two, but...it is able to go down to one and lower in certain diseases. This causes ulcers, dissolving of the stomach muscle wall, and all sorts of nastiness. HCL is used to pit steel sometimes, so it can digest this sort of material. The thing is, if a human had this low of a PH Normally, his gut would litterally melt away.

If ogres are able to make a massive quantity of HCL in their stomachs, they can get down to 1 PH or lower. To keep from digesting themselves, ogre stomachs would need to produce massive quantities of mucous. We're talking tons of goop here to buffer the massive amounts of acid. This would have a disadvantage though in that the stomach wall could not uptake some chemicals like the human stomach does, such as caffine, certain vitamins, and alcohaul. While rather a small point, perhaps this is why Ogre beer is so toxic to other species: ogres can't uptake alcohaul untill its into the small intestine, and by then it's mixed up with so many other chemicals and food its effect is really weak.


 Then, before this mass of acidic slop hits the intestines, we would need a ton of bile juices to change the PH back to a normal level. Thus the pancreas in an ogre must be huge, with many ductal cells to produce bicarbinate ions in order to turn this acidic mess into something less damaging...from here on out, the digestive system procedes just like a human one, albiet bigger.

How funny though....I never thought all my hard hours of slaving in school would help me in trying to explain the digestive system of a fantasy creature! ^o^

I'm not sure about hardness (can't find a source to compare mohs hardness), but chitin seems like a good candidate for teeth. And interestingly, chitin not only accelerates healing in humans, but is related to the immune system of plants and animals, which leads me to believe ogres may be chitin based. In it's natural form (the chitin in arthropodic shells is reinforced with calcium) is tough, pliable and resilient.
As for Chaos ogres, alot of what has been said about their conversion is based upon the standard interpretation of the gods. However, Nurgle is not just the plague god, at his core he stands for stagnation, resilience and unchange. And his great enemy is Tzeentch, the lord of change and mutation. Slaanesh is also misrepresented, it stands for sensation, and feeling, whether good or bad, Slaaneshi followers want to experience everything in life. Khorne is the opposite of Slaanesh, and it's nemesis. Whereas a Slaaneshi daemon would drag out your death, and make it last and feel for as long as possible, a bloodletter would kill you instantly. I'm not quite sure about the core of Khorne's faith.
As for birth. What if much of the young ogre's stomach was in the mostly cavernous chest, and would drop very quickly after birth (with month's or just a couple years), allowing the chest to bulk up and solidify as the whelp got physical, fought and hunted. This would allow for larger children, and would show signs of gutless evolution.

however, ogre babes are born with a gut - any gutless ones are thrown into maw pits to become either gorgers or lunch

I like the idea of chitin, but would have to look into it further.

Well, not gutless, but less pronounced, like a potbelly. And I've always imagined the gorger babes to have a pit like stomach, as though starved.
And about the woman model, I've always assumed it was a male dressed up as a woman. It's a maneater, so I thought it adipted human woman attributes.

And about the woman model, I've always assumed it was a male dressed up as a woman. It's a maneater, so I thought it adipted human woman attributes.

I ordered that model actually. ^^ It's a bit difficult to see on just a picture, but the beard on the model is actually a seperate peice, and behind it the ogre has huge lips and a jutting tooth, so you can make a bearded or beardless model. She's a women, just trying to disguise herself as a man. Not to mention no ogre male has...uhhhh....attributes like hers.

I just thought of something: could Ogres worship the Old Ones? Im just wondering because they could have had a religion before the Maw, and I wonder what Ogre Old One worshippers would be like. I reckon their biology would be different to regular Ogres, as they haven't been affected by the Maw.

An interesting point this: does Ogre religion affect their biology?

This article may be of use to us:
http://uk.games-workshop.com/ogrekingdoms/designers%2Dnotes/1/

I noticed near the bottom of the first page Phil says Ogres are "generally long-lived and can be around 150 when they die."
Found these bits of info too:
"Ogres have a muscle system in their stomachs to help them grind up food."
"brain is roughly the size of a dog's."

I've not had a detailed look at all the Ogre articles available on the GW site yet, but I think they'd be worth a read in case there's anything else we could add to the Almanac:
http://uk.games-workshop.com/ogrekingdoms

Looking at the variety of the Ogre diet that we appear to agree on in past discussions, a chambered digestive system would be necessary in order for the subject to deal with the many, many things it eats.

Furthermore, I would propose that Ogres, like cows, would be considered ruminants and would effectively chew cud.  A forestomach that would hold wood, raw grain, metal, and other objects too hard for an Ogre's stomach to break down would be somewhat necessary.  Once the metal/wood/stone/grain/whatever is broken down by the stomach's acids, it can be regurgitated, masticated, and brought into the stomach proper.

As far as an Ogre's senses go, I could see the majority of their senses being dulled somewhat as compared to humanity's, with one exception:  smell.  The vast majority of predatory creatures, which Ogres certain qualify under, use their olfactory organs to track down prey.  While I do not see Ogres (aside from Gorgers) as having an extraordinarily sharp sense of smell, I do see them as having keener-than-human olfactory capabilities.

To compensate for their voraciousness, it may be that they do not taste food with their sense of smell like humanity does.  Or perhaps they just think food tastes good to begin with.

Gralph Boarbiter

Is a chambered digestive system supporeted by the anatomical diagrams and discussion in the ogre army book?  I seem to remember it referring to one stomach only, but don't have the book with me at present.

The diagram does not appear to have a chambered stomach, though we can get at the same effect a few other ways if we feel the need... some parts of digestion can take place in the intestinal track, which can be 'staged' by tight muscular control.  Or the stomach can have stages of chemical bombardment of the food, at one time digesting some things at another digesting others.

Some of these are old topics, i know, and apologies for that, but ive only just caught up on reading, having just spent my weekend working.

ill offer what little i have to give for the almanac, im not a student of nature or anything, but ill try anyway.

Ogre stomachs-
In the dissection on page fifty, it mentions only briefly that ogres could possibly be gastroliths, using stones to aid in digestion. however, it could also be assumed that this ogre in particular may have been partaking in showing his cronies that he may be able to join the iron guts, given that he can eat stone.

Ogre diet: Cooked meat or raw meat?
I want to look at the fact that ogres not only eat cooked meat, but could possibly prefer it.
on page 11 of the ogre kingdoms book, it cites an ogre feast.

"the butchers know full well that their tribe appreciates diversity of diet as much as the next cave full of predators. Whilst the traditional eating songs resound through the feast halls, the butchers punctuate steaming platefulls of cave beast with raw Bretonnian in wild garlic, tough dwarf meat served in a gromril case, thick sausages stuffed with the finest empire soldiery and -widely seen as delicacy- tender elf legs fried in horse blood."

we have to remember that a butchers' role in ogre society is not only shaman, but also cook, particularly at feasts. this egsample above shows that meat is actually prepared and served as a meal, not just as sustenance. to me, this could also be a very strong indication that ogres do have a refined sense of taste.

It is also possible that this fact enabled Empire explorer Reuben Kyte to survive the angry fist tribe to become their fire master, as cited on page 57 of the ogre kingdoms book. in using herbs and spices and methods of cooking, he impressed the tribe, and was raised to level of 'firemaster'.

Ogre respitory systems-
I think that given that the mountains of mourn are such a high altitude enviroment that the ogres would have developed (evolved possibly) their lungs somehow to be able to take in more oxygen in such a low oxygen enviroment. and i most definately agree that the ogre chest muscles provide breathing and not a diapraghm.

Ogre skin tones-
Could be anything, ranging from fleshy tones to grey like tones. we have to remember that ogre... (and i use this term EXTREMELY loosely) ...hygiene, would mean that their skin color in the book, the grey pallid tone, is due to the fact that the ogre doesnt wash. the ogres are described as a sprawling tide of unwashed fat and muscle, after all.

Ogre resistance to temperature-
we dont commonly see ogres wearing much to protect their bodies from temperature and climate, really the only egsample of it that we see is in the ogre hunter.

"A hunter is generally covered in a network of scars and tattoos, overlaid by the thick pelts of his prey as protection from the arctic conditions of the mountains of mourn."

so despite their staggering ability to resist temperature, it is still only that- they can resist it. they are not immune. and as for ogres in hot climates? theyd have to eventually get used to it, i guess. as someone of a thicker girth myself, i certainly sweat like crazy and feel very uncomfortable, but after some time i do get used to it.

thats all i have to offer for now!

OK, so what is the final verdict on Ogre Biology?

I am writing up a prelimenary report for review, but it probably wont be finished until this weekend at the earliest.  As sad as it may seem, I have other obligations I need to meet before spending hours writing speculative fiction about a wargame race  .   The project is underway though, I'm doing it system by system so it will be fairly complete.  Right now I'm on embryology.  I'll try to post an update when it looks cleaner if people want to see how it is turning out.

cool

bump any more progress

Bare with me because I've downed a six pack...

First of all their guts, this should come first when talking ogres. I can see a few options available. They have a sort of musculature in their abdomen, the most obvious possibility is some sort of smooth muscle system (that does the work in our stomachs) that is hypertrophic so that is can apply so much more force. Good except that the force would be applied with the soft stomach. Stones, such as birds use to grind up food are a possibility but not great... Another idea is that the pelvis and/or ribs could be involved, and thus the skeletal muscles involved. A little bit simplistic, but remember that vertebrate jaws are derived from ribs, so that it would be possible for this method to evolve so that the ribs could articulate like jaws. A reasonably serious problem here is the seperation of the abdomen and thorax by the diaphram. In terms of breaking down things like metal, ideally nitric acid would be in their guts, however the breakdown of stuff in the stomach is actually dependent on enzymes, which require a low pH to operate, rather than simple chemical reactions with the acids. So you can wave this problem away by saying that ogres have enzymes that catalyse the uptake of metal ions from the surface of metals. This would be a slow process though, slower than the breakdown of cellulose I'd guess.

Senses... well I imagine ogres to be sight based hunters. Look at the hunters, they use the crossbows. Hunters and maneaters both have a higher BS than most humans, so they you'd think they'd need decent eyesight to distinguish objects at a distance. Their sense of smell could be ok.. dogs have very good olfactory senses but will eat faeces... however there's no reason for them to. Taste would also probably be pretty average. They are pretty crude when it comes to building stuff, so a poor sense of touch.

I see ogres as being quite similar to neanderthals in many ways, (although strangely with smaller brains despite being twice the height) they are stocky and probably quite resistant to cold. In addition they must have an incredible ability to extract oxygen from the atmosphere at twice the altitude of earths mountains. This could be the reasn for the grey skin, they use a non-heme based method of transporting oxygen that is not red like oxygenated heme. Note that arthropods and others use copper based molecules that give them blue/green blood, so this isn't too far fetched, though grey blood would be a little weird with a transition metal. Anyhoo they'd probably also need a partcularly large heart that would drive this grey blood through their bodies but with sort limbs this wouldnt be too much of an issue.

Enough for now..