Ogre Almanac - Gut Magic (2006)

On this week’s plate: Gut Magic!  Gutmagic is unique to ogres and an important part of any ogre battle plan… and more than likely an integral part of ogre peacetime culture as well (all ten minutes of it!).
Food for thought:
~What exactly is Gut Magic?  Just another way of manipulating the wind’s of chaos?  Exotic alchemy in the ultimate crucible: an ogre stomach?  Demon instilled powers from a ‘chaos god’: the Maw?  Faith based powers from their dutiful ‘worship’ of the Maw?  A sympathetic connection between ogres from their history of warpstone exposure?  Something else entirely?
~Gastromancy has unique properties not found in other races magic… the strongest spells only work on other ogres, spells are locally cast from the same pool of energy, unique and violent miscasts, and universal (instinctual?) knowledge for all practitioners of all the ‘spells’... what gives Gut Magic these unique properties?
~It is highly implied in most readings of Warhammer ‘magic’ that mages of various sorts have a lot more tricks up their sleeves than what we see on the battlefield… other spells just take too much ritual to cast or aren’t combat effective (the ‘grow pretty flowers’ spell just doesn’t have the same oomph as a lightning bolt).  Any ideas for other Gut Magic ‘recipes’ seen off the battlefield?
~Ah the Maw… whether or not it is the actual ‘source’ of gut magic, it is certainly tied to it in the minds of practicing butchers.  So… what is it anyways?  Not like ogres who go and visit the thing have a good mind left to tell about it… Is it the remains of a giant warpstone meteor?  An enormous ‘chaos spawn’ from the fused life on the plains where it decended?  An actual alien entity from beyond the stars?  A minor Chaos God of some sort?  Or just ogrish superstition?
~Butchers are the wise and holy men in their communities… they are the brains behind the tribe, and collectively are arguably as much a decision making force as a Tyrant.  What exact roles to Butchers and Slaughtermasters play in society?  Rituals?  Official power?  ‘Unofficial’ power?  What is the distinction between a Butcher and Slaughtermaster (besides power level) anyways?  Why the discontinuous ‘lvl 2’ and ‘lvl 4’ wizards with no intermediate rank?

That should be enough for now, dig in!

my money's on the great maw being a gigantic warpstonemeteor (like the one which hit Mordheim) or something similar to Morrslieb (the chaos moon i believe) having fallen from orbit. With this in mind, I see the gut magic as another, albeit unique, way of manipulation the winds of magic. It happens in an innate way (apparently as some physilogical reaction to certain catalysts or stimulants ingested by the butcher) and is possible some kind of magic user mutation.

I see it this way becasue it makes the ogres more integrated into the internal logic of the warhammer world. Although gut maguic functions differant to regular  magic rules wise, I would expect that in the background, it is just a differant (probabley latent) manipulation of the winds of magic. Too much else in the world relies on warpstone/chaos gate/winds of magic for me to realistically see the ogres as an entirely seperate army. Perhaps it's just my deire to slot the current ogre kingdoms fluff neatly into the existing wahammer wortld, making it seem as though it was there all along (as opposed to the way the tau [40K' latest new race] were crowbarred into a ficticious universe where they didn't really fit).

-I could see the magic easily going both ways; winds of chaos and innate ogre magic.
If gut magic is simply a method of manipulating the winds of chaos, which is easiest, the Maw is clearly some sort of warpstone meteor and/or daemonic entity. And since the Maw caused species wide mutation magic got bred into the ogre race.
But then again, orcs and goblins have their own special magic which draws no power from chaos. I could see both ogres and orcs using a similar racial magic. But I hate to link the two races any more than they already are. Still, in both species the wizards are highly shamanistic, having little to no formal training, and rely on raw power rather than carefully composed spells with somatic, verbal and material components. And both have a great potential for power with a terrible backlash. And thats where I put my money. Butchers are more like priests who draw their power from worship rather than wizards who put their stock into careful study and practice.
-And as for gut magic's unique properties, such as working specifically on ogres, it is easier to explain that without chaos being involved. Gut magic is an intrinsic racial thing linked to worship of the Maw, which is eating. And it only works on those bearing the Maw's gift; an ogre gut. And I see its uses off-field as being pretty small. Gut magic would have to be a very utilitarian magic, because ogres have no need for 'pretty light spells' or entertaining illusions, but there isn't alot an ogre would need magic to do for him.

I'm all for the maw being a huge dripply mass of flesh made up or ogres and animals melted down by warpstone. This thing could eat that wussy sarlac pit in star wars for breakfast. Never mind the fact that something that huge and alive would have starved by now, cause no amount of ogre wanderers would be able to support it's bulk. We're talking about magic and warpstone, and we know they don't play by normal rules.

I like to compare ogre gut magic to a real life magic, voodoo. Both have medicine men/shamans and both use living/dead things as fetishes for their magic. Voodoo magic actually works, but because the people it affects beleive in it. Voodoo magic can actually kill people. An ogre butcher, beleiving by eating a heart makes him stronger, and having a whole group of ogres "affected" by it and thinking they are stronger, would act stronger due to a placebo affect. Note that the ogre spells are not flashy. No lightning bolts, no storms or magical creatures flying out of anywhere. These spells work because the ogres want them too.

The only spell that doesn;t really work this way is the bonecruncher spell. While it acts like a voodoo spell *eat bones to destroy another person's bones* the people it affects are probably not beleivers in ogre magic. Maybe the ogres beleif, plus the warpstone taint around them, can make their beleifs real even to those who aren't ogres.

I imagine in addition to their regular spells, ogre butchers have a lot of evil hexes they could place on people. I can imagine so easily an ogre butcher getting mad with a regular bull in the tribe, and making a big deal cursing the poor bull in front of everyone else. And when that same bull is found later with his head bashed in a pattern disturbingly similar to the butcher's favorite club, the remaining ogres get terrified. Before long, an ogre would waste away just from the sheer terror and beleif of the butcher's magic.

Note how butchers seem to have an elite society. They're the only ones who are allowed to use fire, they do all the cooking, they're the smart ones, their positions are forever and they don't have to fight to keep them like a tyrant. It's like an elite club. To keep in power they use fear and trickery to keep the other ogres in line. Thus, while it may have started as simple tricks and bluffery, ogre butchers grasp on fear tactics has grown to the point wear butchers even beleive their own spells are real themselves. Add that in with enough warpstone and you have magic.

Let's just hope an ogre butcher out there somewhere starts to think he can make armies explode just by chewing onions and garlic...

I also think gut magic works a lot like voodoo and superstition. Gut magic is highly ritual I can see butchers doing all sorts of rituals for nearly everything they do.

for example, the correct way of creating fire according to ogres might be:
- Stack up sticks to resemble Great Maw
- Throw in splintered bone from an orc
- Devour gnoblar in this exact order: feet, hands, legs, arms, torso, head
- Smash black 'spark-rocks' together until the maw answers and lights the fire

Gut magic could work in the same matter: their effect comes straight from the butcher's willpower and his link to the warpstone that is the great maw. But he still believes he needs to eat something perticular for the effect to take place.

I really like the voodoo inspired belief powered theory of gut magic. It's alot more favorable than just another manipulation of chaos.
And it makes butchers really scary. The use of scare tactics, and the idea of cadres of butchers hanging out, controlling a tribe of ogres through fear and superstition is terrifying.

I like Voodoo as a model for gut magic societally, but in a world where we have real magic I'm not sure the 'people believe it so it is true' mechanism is a necessary explanation for obviously supernatural events.  While increased strength and toughness I can buy as a psychological pump-up, but regeneration is a bit much... and I doubt a highelf magi is going to be impressed enough to break appart his bones or even panic over the power of ogre belief.  Besides, it muddles up dispel mechanics to me.

Still, I can see a lot of 'impressionistic' hexes and curses working societally still... having 'upset the butcher' probably has more frightening consequences than being served crappy meals.  Publicly upsetting the butcher probably leads to social ostracization until accounts are settled, I certainly wouldn't want to catch any of that bad juju just by hanging around an unlucky ogre!

Still the actual method of casting it is reasonable to be belief based... so long as it is fueling something a bit more mystical underneath.  I am hesitant to link it too carefully to link it to the Maw (or at least, the Maw as it is now).  I worry that, whether a physical being or a spiritual one, the Maw is more or less a 'lesser Chaos God' on par with the great horned rat, and that drawing magic from it makes Ogres functionally creatures of chaos... and we have quotes stating that they are not.  Now I know it is a fine line to walk but it is one I'd like to stay away from if we can.

I think the effects of the maw in the past, a sort of massive 'warpstone energy' infusion changing ogres greatly could be the mechanism we are looking for.  Ogre magic is working off of some 'local energy source' that is depleted and rapidly recovers (casting the same spell is more difficult in one round, but back to normal the next).  I don't feel this is 'global energy'... there are enough ogres out there that if it were a single source in the world (IE: the Maw) for all gut magic that there would be more 'random fluctuation' of available energy from other ogres in the world drawing upon it.  Searching for a local energy source leaves, in my mind, two options.  One could be just local ambient magical energy: butchers could be specialized 'thaumnivores' and symbolically 'eat' and absorb energies to power their spells.  The other source is ogres themselves, not individually in each butcher but each ogre as a mini-battery of magical energy.

I think this latter option has a lot of explanatory power.  Each ogre, with some of the spiritual and magical essence of the Maw still within him as a legacy of the great cataclysm that defines their race, serves as an energy source for gifted members of their race to drawn upon and (with belief and ritual that might not be entirely necessary to the process) unleash it.  Unleashed on foes, the effects are quick and dirty with little finesse... but turned back on the ogres that powered it things become more interesting:  the ogres themselves can become the 'fuel' for the spells cast on them, allowing the butcher to focus on other magical tasks.  This also serves to make the magic much more difficult to dispel, harder to get rid of an effect being self generated than to simply sever connections to an outside source.  Of course to channal the energy from another ogre would take it's toll, often in the form of bodily damage.  It also helps give impetus to the horrific gut magic miscast table... accidently tapping into your own energy source or that of another butcher... or even just drawing in too much from your fellow ogres... could be dangerous.

It is important to keep this separate from Waaagh! energy... ogres and gnoblers already of the somewhat common orc/goblin template feel to them (something I hope we are moving away from with further definition in this project).   Waaagh!  Energy is created by excitement of the masses... whereas this model of ogre magic would have it being a permanent feature... the same lingering influence that drives that ever present hunger also drives the magic, making it a unique racial feature AND explaining why chaos ogres lose access to it (more pure chaos energy would drive out a great deal of that essence I'd imagine).

Another aspect of gut magic I pondered over was why there are only level 2 and 4 wizards… either a practiced adept or a grand master: no level 1 apprentices, and no level 3 masters.  To me this screams of a system where the casters suddenly leap in spell ability, either naturally or (my preferred choice) ritualistically.  The idea of a young butcher-in-training with no magical knowledge, just preparatory servitude under a butcher, undergoing some dangerous (and, knowing ogres, probably frequently fatal) ritual that, if survived, leaves the new butcher enlightened and with instinctual knowledge of his spell repertoire.

This is just a quick draft, but I’d imagine something like this…

A young whelp is brought to the tribe’s butcher by the elder females.  They have watched all the young ones carefully, and they know well the signs of a young servant of the Maw: some bear birthmarks that resemble the maw upon their gut, some draw blood instead of milk from their mothers, some are born eating their own placenta… this young one had one of the most sacred signs: his mother died in giving birth to him and he ate part of her body shortly after birth.  Sometimes, when young ones are brought to the butcher they are turned away: only he can tell for sure if the young whelp has the natural gift of channeling the hunger of the Maw… just as he can feel that hunger in all his fellow ogres, a butcher can tell if it is strong in a whelp.  Those who are not strong enough, he turns away… but the signs are not false today, and the butcher takes the small whelp and bites deeply into his gut: the tribe has a new apprentice butcher today.

The next several years are difficult for the young apprentice… not able to travel and hunt with his peers, he is forever the outsider from the social hierarchy that his young brothers are already building.  Adult males and even other females are wary of him, and while other whelps drink at the teet of the tribe’s cows, he is allowed only to eat what he can catch himself and drink foul and sickening concoctions made by the butcher.  Many of these mixtures are poisonous, sending the young growing ogre into fits and seizures… many apprentices do not survive the training, but this one is strong and will likely live to be tested.

Under the butcher’s tutelage, the whelp grows quickly and learns to speak at a young age.  Although he is worked to exhaustion assisting the butcher, forced to do work normally only fit for gnoblers, by watching and listening the bright apprentice learns many things by watching his master in ways that no other ogre is allowed to do.  He learns the art of making fire and how to preserve food for times of lean hunting… he discovers the recipes of the tribe, the secrets of herbs and spices, and even the art of using herbs to make healing foods to ease a cow’s childbirth and or reduce a sick bull’s fever… but although he is shown the hidden formula for the foods of gut magic, he is never taught how to perform those miracles.

One day, when the apprentice approaches adulthood, a drink given to him by his master wracks his body with pain like he has never felt before and drives him unconscious.  He awakes to find himself in a deep pit, his master sitting at the entrance above him.  A bucket of water mixed with herbs is lowered into the pit, and when drank the bucket is removed.  His master visits him every day, day after day until time loses meaning.  Never once does he answer questions or respond in any way, only repeatedly lowering buckets of water… the worst fear an ogre can know sets in… starvation…

The young apprentice quickly exhausts the food he can find in the pit… the few rats are eaten, the mold in the shadowy corner of the cell is licked up, and small rocks are swallowed.  His body grows weaker and weaker until he cannot even stand.  Dreams of eating his own body persist in his fevered dreams, and eventually he loses the strength to even pick through his own dung for maggots and mushrooms.  His precious gut is just a tiny vestige of its once great glory, and he can only wait for death to take him…

But death does not come… when all hope is lost; the bucket that comes every day is lowered.  Inside, instead of the water that has been the only comfort these long uncountable days is a fist sized black rock… the rock feels strange, hot and cold at the same time and hard to look at… and it puts off an energy, even in his weakened state he can feel it.  It feels like… the hunger.  Looking at his master for guidance, and getting only stares, the starving ogre does the only thing he can… willing to try anything to end the maddening starvation, he grasps the stone in his hand and swallows it whole.  The world goes black.

In his dreams, he sees the stone… it is the Maw.  Time has no meaning, just fevered dreams of the Maw devouring him over and over… he tries to run, with no success… he throws himself into the Maw only to be devoured and the process begins again… there is no escape… he tries to eat the Maw… he tries to give up… his mind is fading… and then he knows: the only way to not be eaten by the Maw, the only avenue for escape… is to be the Maw himself.  He is the Maw.  He is a butcher.

The butcher awakes and meets his former master.  He lies in the butcher’s cave, surrounded by a great feast.  But, despite the overwhelming hunger in his body he eats slowly… he feels the difference in himself that the ritual has brought.  The fragment of the Maw, which some may call warpstone, rested deep in his gut… a part of his gut…a part of himself as he was now the Maw.  From that center of strength, he could feel the strength of his former master… now his brother… the same as his, resting in his gut and part of his gut.  Further out, he could feel in the guts of the bulls and cows of his tribe that same echo of the Maw, long faded compared to the living piece he now carries but still present and still defining.  Even further, he can sense faint echoes of other ogres, other tribes and other butchers as far away as Lustria and Cathay, in ships in the great seas of the world, even pilgrims to the great Maw itself as faints sparks against the overwhelming energy of its presence.

The magic he had desired so long to learn in the end did not need to be taught… the knowledge of how to grasp and twist this energy in himself and other ogres was instinctual to him, and the reagents required were long ago learned by watching his former master work.  Still, there was much to learn… while the Bruisers and Tyrants may beat their chests, it is the advice and portents of the Butchers that tell where to hunt and when, when to feast and when to move on… that named new ogres, recognized their accomplishments or ate them for their crimes.  There are many lessons ahead in the art of ruling from the shadows.

In his gut, he feels a sense of dread and power that all butchers share but never talk about… the knowledge that, in the unnamed future, drummed in the back of his mind of the day, if he survives to that day, that he will go through another ordeal that made the one he just passed seem like a pleasant day lounging after feast, the ordeal to become a true Slaughtermaster…

wow

that's great! So the butchers can sense the other ogres in his gut, and the other butchers even more so...
this definately explains why some miscasts effect all butchers, and also why the casting value goes up when allready cast.

way to go, Pauncho!

I have a theory about the reagents that the Ogres use in their spells. If I subscribe to Pauncho's view, the spiritual power that is the vestiges of the Maw's influence will only effect Ogres without a reagent. The items consumed by the Butcher provide the necessary conduit for the power to be used to harm others. Basically it is a focus: take Trollguts for my first example. Without a proper focus, the spell would effect every Ogre in existence, but in order to do this, the Butcher's power and that of every Ogre around him would be burnt out, and the shock to their systems that would cause would be enough to kill them. The reagents focus the power of the Butchers.

That sounds good Ghworg.  I was thinking that the reagents themselves were just vessels for the very trace magic essence they contained... troll intestines have just a hint of regeneration, and thus processed in the body of the butcher he can take that magical essence, enhanced by his own Maw essence and that of the ogres around him, and tie it to the essence of a group of ogres.  Without that energy to shape the magic, as you said, lead to desperate attempts to draw energy to shape the spell from too many ogres at once, draw energy from his fellow butchers, or be forced to strengthen his own connection to the Maw to dangerous levels to compensate...

Whereas other spell casters have to worry about misprounouncing a mystic syllable or gesturing incorrectly, a Butcher is more concerned about getting the food down quick enough to focus the magic, grabbing the food with the right essence for the job, and hoping it hasn't spoiled too much to feed the magic he is shaping.

As in...
Miscast 1:  Desperately trying to draw energy from the butchers around him, he floods with gut energy and pops violently while ravaging the bodies of his fellow butchers
Miscast 2:  He is forced to draw upon his own gut energy to feed the failing spell, burning out (at least temporarily) his connection to the Maw in a painful way
Miscast 3:  Reaching too far to drawn energy from Ogres across the world strains his system, damaging or possibly killing him
Miscast 4:  Attempting to drawn the energy unshaped from the ogres around him, the butcher 'snuffs out' that 'flavor' of energy from all the ogres in the immediate area... that won't come back tilll a good meal at least!
Miscast 5:  Taking in too much energy, the butcher releases the pent up energy in a... primitive... way like he would any other hard to digest food.
Miscast 6:  Unable to find the energy to fuel his magic in the ogres around him, he taps into the Maw itself and burns out his mind trying to shape that alien energy.

Brilliant! Thanks Pauncho for adapting my idea.

I really like the voodoo inspired belief powered theory of gut magic. It's alot more favorable than just another manipulation of chaos.
And it makes butchers really scary. The use of scare tactics, and the idea of cadres of butchers hanging out, controlling a tribe of ogres through fear and superstition is terrifying.

I agree.

On a completely other note, Trollguts can be very nasty when cast on Rhinox Riders.

I think Gut magic would follow the voodoo model of 'they believe it so it's true'.

Because the Maw is made of warpstone, however (and it is - see the BRB), the Ogres ties to this mutating force have given them a kind of psychogenic field. The reason gut magic can only benefit other Ogres is because only other Ogres believe it will affect them.

I guess what I'm saying is that Butchers are able to channel the warpstone energy inherent in the Ogres.

I like too think of the Maw as a Cthullu-esque Devourer from below ,and Gastromancy as simply being an affect of the close exposure too the Maw that the ogre race had when it ...landed

What if the gutmagic isn't magic at all.
a butcher eats a piece of wood and spits splinters ( S2, if you know what I mean )
a butcher eats garlic andenemy units smell it and panic.
a butcher eats stones and the goo that he vomits creates tougher skin.
a butcher eats spinache and ( don't let me tell you which spell that would be )
a butcher eats and strengten himself ( or it is bad food )
a butcher eats some warpstone and a unit is covered in that, so magic is harder on that unit.

These are pretty simple explanations for magic and other ogres are more trained in fighting then in knowing what to eat ( and not eat everything)

The great maw is (like the real world ) something, that is explaned by different races in different ways.
twin tailed comet, great maw, warpstone on mordheim are all the same events ( but in different times )

The difficulty with making gut magic not "magic" at all is then trying to explain all the magicesque qualities of it... how is it dispelled?  Why do items designed to counteract or interact with magic work with gut magic? Why can butchers dispel spells?

I'm all for gut magic being unique, but taking it out of being magic at all opens up a whole can of worms, and Mr. Occam would like me to avoid that unless I have very pressing reasons not to...