Which color is Orc blood?

Discuss.

I've always leaned towards green, myself. Though I don't know why I do.

Surely, there must be some colour art by GW that shows an orc bleeding?

Hmm, I'm gonna hit google images for that one.

I never ever saw green blood on any weapon in a GW picture (or, come to think, in any picture depicting somebody fighting Orcs).

I think I remember someone on this board saying that in the "official GW fluff" orc blood used to be green but then got changed to a dark red. It makes more sense in my mind for their blood to be red; they seem to be mammals and all mammalian blood is based on some sort of haemoglobin which is red.
Don't they also photosynthesise though? I'd guess that their chloroplasts and therefore the green pigment chlorophyll would be in special cells in the skin...
Guess who's studying biology at university!

Yeah, I'm flippnig through a bunch of artwork now and can't seem to find an orc bleeding!

Orcs don't bleed! They're too 'ardcore

sure they bleed, and they put "hello kitty" bandaids on their little "booo bos"

In my sometimes humble opinion, Orcs SHOULD have red blood [it's the Iron in the Hemoglobin (red) which carries Oxygen throughout the body]. The shade of red would depend on whether it's arterial blood [bright red] or veinous blood [dark red].
From a modeling point of view, having Orc's blood red stops folks asking or quietly wondering what all that goop on the swords, axes, et al IS.

Am I right in thinking that orcs photosynthesise though?

jackanory wrote:

Am I right in thinking that orcs photosynthesise though?

I think that that idea came from one of the GW Game Designers who put forward the idea that Orcs & Goblins "bud" as a means of procreation; they obviously STILL buy into the story their Mom told them about finding them in the Pumpkin patch . MY Orcs & Goblins, like their AD&D Brethren [note all the 1/2 Orcs], WILL mate with just about ANYTHING/ANYONE, AND are devote carnivores. My newer Orcs &, particularly, Goblins are leaving the Green Look behind in favor of a Reddish Brown; purely as a personal thing, I think Green bipedal mammals are a stupid idea.

Note: the aforemention statement about the designers' views on sexual matters MIGHT go along way to explaining why, with the exception of Chris Fitzpatrick's work, GW produces some truly poor female minis.

Orcs are Fungus/Algae hybrids... but they still have dark red blood!

WarbossKurgan wrote:

Orcs are Fungus/Algae hybrids.

Saul, is that GW's "official" take on Orcs? If so. I think it best to forego my official reaction lest I inadvertently offend a respected friend.

I believe they come from spores in 40K and doesn't the Warhammer RPG say they are a form of fungus? Of course, the same book also says goblins are just younger orcs (so I think it was meant to be a false imperial take on greenskins).

I cannot help but to be impressed by the astounding, nay, phenomenal leaps, bounds and outright plunges of logic in this topic.

But, no matter, my orc mini in question now has red blood. Thanks for the input!

*Totters off, muttering "spore" and "fungus" under his breath*

Glad we could help.

Officially.... Its very open to interpretation.

The latest edition of the Warhammer rule book has a one sentence reference to the star craft of the Old Ones bringing the spores of the Orcs to the Warhammer World. That's it!

For me I take that as Orcs = Orks = Orcs. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck.

I've always LOVED that Duck thingy.

To reopen a closed discussion - about the mammals.. what are eldar then? They have green acidic "blood"..

I recall a bit of fluff in a white dwarf or some other article (which unfortunately I can't find to validate my claim :S) that orcs have red blood, despite the fact that their blood is supposed to be green according to this and that, but GW decided to make it red because green blood is hard to see on a green-skinned model.

According to GW fluff, 40K orks come from spores, and are related to fungus.

So I'll guess there actually is some kind of photosynthesis happening there (or maybe not as most fungus are parasites).

And not only that, they have "mechanic" pieces floating in their blood, (unknown origin) that automatically divides orks into meks, doks, oddboyz, etc.

The WHFB fluff has changed a lot through the years, from "orcs are the materialization of bad dreams", to what WarbossKurgan said.

As for the color of blood, I'll suppose is some sort of sap, sticky white-cream in colour.

But my guess is as good as anybody's.

Always interesting to discuss this filosophical matters.

Best wishes

There was actually a piece in WD some years ago that specified that, at least, Orks have red blood, and that they do photosynthesize at the same time, thanks to them being ûber-survivers engineered thusly by the Old Ones.

That also explains why the inside of the mouths of most Ork/cs painted by GW are painted fleshy tones.

On the other hand, I have seen very old illustrations of Orc/ks getting lanced/shot and bleeding green. Of course, they were wearing "Red-Era" style clothing, and we all know how GW feels about that period of time...

"Red-Era"?

I think Red-Era was a time GW painted everything red if at all possible.

And I think Orc blood is red, as the skin colour is not primarily influenced by the colour of you blood. Think of all the human skin colours - I don't think you could tell the difference by the blood.

And as Deaf pointed out, it's the red haemoglobin which is carrying the oxygen, and with Orc cells most probably functioning like those of every other thing that walks the (Warhammer) world, it wil be necessary. As for the photosynthesis, I don't see an issue why they should not be able to do it at the same time. However, when the green colour is due to chloroplasts, Night Goblins should be extremely pale, or even white.

I always imagined them as oozing a blacish-red liquid. More like congealed human blood. I think there's descriptions of Orks bleeding in GorkaMorka...

and we are forgetting the "chaos dwarf engineered orcs" a.k.a. Black Orcs. They clearly say they have Black Blood.

and you have the black blood upgrade in the mordheim warband =)