Again, again, can we please get the people doing AoS to script fucking 40k?
Forbidden Power is so good compared to 40k’s myopic obsession with one faction. We have:
1) Lady Olynder, a female and an antagonist, BEATING THE CELESTANT PRIME in a fight, just winning, no tricks, she just wins!
2) Death finally wins a fucking plot relevant battle and simply succeeds in their plan to break open the Midnight Vault and release Mister ‘Tithe of Bones’ guy inside.
3) Teclis and Tyrion are like ‘Duh we knew what you were doing Sigmar, did you really think you could hide it from us?’ and Grungni him fucking self is like ‘Sigmar, don’t be an idiot, Teclis is gonna figure this out,’ when Sigmar tells him he mustn’t tell Teclis.
4) Sigmar can’t do jackshit with the Illumination Engines himself he needs to ask Grungni to do it.
5) On top of ALL OF THIS the book finds time to also just off-handidly give Gordrakk another Epic Win where he crushes the Astral Templars, a major Stormhost, and totally wrecks them when they try to block him ransacking one of the Stormvaults. Not only does Gordrakk win, something beyon Ghazghkull’s abilities, he now also has a superweapon battering ram that can blow up mountains
You see how in AoS the Stormcast aren’t invincible protagonists who are better than everyone at everything? Can we please get whoever is writing them to write the fucking Space Marines?
Since 40k fluff just leaves me feeling utterly desolate of late, and with honestly there being nothing worth discussing concerning 40k Xenos as they more and more simply become a backdrop to die or act as support for humans, I’ve been reading more Age of Sigmar, and been delighted by how much more diversity it offers. So I want to talk a bit about the biggest Orc, er, Orruk around at current.
Gordrakk is the leader of the Ironjawz, the major Orruk faction in AoS at current who have a pretty cool look going on. I always loved Black Orcs for the most for my Orcs, and Night Goblins for my Gobbos, so Ironjawz appeal to me as they’re an extension of the Black Orc aesthetic in many ways.
Now when discussing Gordrakk there’s two things I want to look at; 1) Is he engaging as a character? 2) Is he impressive as a Character?
1) Is he engaging?
Let us begin by being fair; making an engaging Orc/Ork/Orruk character is HARD. The vast majority of Orks, for example, in 40k Novels are bland and pointless characters who are so obviously being telegraphed as ‘will die to make Space Marine look cool’ that they are hardly characters.
Writing an Ork/Orc/Orruk to be both intimidating and interesting is not easy. Look at the Beast, where GW tried to make a ‘terrifying’ and ‘intelligent’ Ork and, instead, made a generic doomsday Chaos Lord who spouted typical Chaos nonsense like ‘You are on your knees son of the Emperor’ and was stripped of absolutely any bit of charm an Ork/Orc/Orruk could have. It was awful.
Contrast that with Ghazghkull who, although a failure at being impressive, is genuinely fun and interesting as a character. Ghazghkull combines the intimidation factor of being an unhinged maniac, with messianic tendencies and maintaining a key part of Ork charm; that blue-and-orange morality of their’s, doing things not out of hate, but because the way they see the world endless War is the one good in existence. Summed up nice in Ghazghkull’s ‘My best enemy’ speech before he spares Yarrick and sends him to Armageddon.
So estabilishing it isn’t easy to make an Orc/Ork/Orruk interesting, how does Gordrakk fare? He’s...alright. He certainly has the seeds of a Ghazghkull type (and he is luckily more based off of him than of Grimgor) with his speech to the Stormcast’s concerning their fundamental misunderstanding of Orruks is good and has strong hints of Ghazghkull’s type of speech actually. Like Ghazghkull he suffers, though, from lacking characters to bounce off of. A sole character can only be so engaging, having a cast to engage with helps a lot and, sadly, both Ghazghkull and Gordrakk lack well-defined or fleshed out casts to have back-and-forth discussion and development with.
2) Is he Impressive:
And here we have a resounding YES! Gordrakk is, far and away, impressive, outstripping ALL 40k Ork Characters and being comparable to some of the Badasses from Fantasy. He has kicked the ass of named Stormcast Protagonists, destroyed entire named Stormhosts, destroyed the main Chaos Stronghold on Ghyran and captured one of the 8 Realmgates leading to the All Points. All this and he’s only really appeared in like 3 Books! Compared to Ghazghkull ‘always running away and losing’ this is amazing.
Gordrakk does so well I’m astonished that people who work on AoS work on 40k simply because of the difference in what’s allowed. In AoS Gordrakk constantly kicks major ass, whist in 40k even Ghazghkull, the no.1 Ork character, has literally never won a single campaign against any Space Marines ever, and has won a grand total of 1 battle against the Imperium as a whole.
Conclusion:
Gordrakk kicks ass...but I’d love for his Megabosses to get fleshed out a bit more, or more of a Gobbla-Skarsnik relationship with his Maw-Krusha, so that he could develop and have discourse a bit more. Still, considering how GW normally treats the Greenskinz, Gordrakk is an enormously cool character.
I’d really love a novel or even an audio Drama for him. He’s basically the only Destruction special character at this point, and we haven’t seen or heard from him since the end of the Realmgate Wars and his victory at the Battle of the Mawgate.
I think in many ways an Audio Drama works for Orruks as it allows the story to be conveyed purely through the entertaining personalities of the creatures themselves. An audio drama focusing on Gordrakk being up to something, perhaps something like targeted for death by the forces of Chaos after he wrecked both the Manticore Dreadhold and captured the Mawgate from them, would be fun.
In particular, though, what I’d hope to see is fleshing out of an extended cast of Orruks around him.
HE’s been super quiet lately, haven’t heard a peep since Realmgate Wars concluded.
I’d like to know what he’s doing with the Mawgate since he controls it. I like to imagine he probably uses it to now invade any Realm he wants at will!
Also I hope the Moonclan Grots come with a character! Maybe a Mork Champion to contrast with Gordrakk being the Fist of Gork? Maybe something like...the Eye of Mork? Or the Fang of Mork? Some powerful Moonclan Grot Shaman character or something!
