u/Agitated_Insect3227

Again spoilers as the book just released, but I'll still keep said spoilers quite vague.

In the novels Twice Dead King: Ruin & Reign by Nate Crowley, the term "dysphorakh" is used to describe when Necrons have moments of realization that they are no longer living beings with no living organs, thus causing them to start disassociating and mentally panic. Thinking they need air but they have no lungs to breathe, requiring food but having no mouth nor stomach. Your mind basically screaming that you should, by all definitions, be dead/non-living but you still are somehow alive.

You can read a great scene of the dysphorakh happening from Ruin here: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1bya66d/book_excerpt_the_horror_of_the_dysporakh_twice/

Anyway, Robert Rath actually has Trazyn directly mention & very briefly suffer from flashs of the dysphorakh a couple times in The Wicked And the Warped. When I heard the word (I listened to the Audio book), I legitimately smiled & thought to myself "Oooh, I know that reference!" 👀

It's of course not surprising to see two authors writing for the same setting under the same publishing company reference and stay consistent with each other's depictions of the same race, but it's still cool to see the dysphorakh concept used by other writers when depicting the Necrons.

(I sure hope this isn't too long to post)

Throughout the Ork novels I've read, I've noticed an interesting & somewhat consistent detail about Grots, the slave/servant species for their larger Ork cousins. Many of the grot characters display a much larger potential for showing actual empathy and even compassion for others while Orks usually care very little for anything but themselves. Heck, Orks often don't even care that much for their own lives as long as they're having fun while dying, lol.

The biggest evidence for this is the Da Red Gobbo Collection, a novel that collects the novellas Da Gobbo's Revenge (Mike Brooks), Da Gobbo's Demise, Da Wrong Type of Green (both by Denny Flowers), Da Gobbo Rides Again, & The Instigator (both by Rhuairidh James). Pretty much every story is about the grots supporting each other for the "Revolution" against Ork kind through beliefs in Da Red Gobbo. I'll explain the context for three of the stories and give short excerpts to show examples of Grots caring for each other.

First, is Da Gobbo's Revenge, which is about a Grot named Fingwit who leads a small team of other grots to commandeer the cannons on an Imperial vessel after their Mekboy dies. Another Ork forces the grots to come with him to go do something else, but Fingwit escapes. Realizing that he needs the other Grots to commandeer the cannons, Fingwit becomes the Red Gobbo to save them. The grots managed to take over the entire ship and originally planned to just fly away by themselves, but Fingwit convinces them to stay and act as inspiration for other grots in the Waaagh, showing them that grots had the potential to accomplish great things just like Orks.

>“I dunno if dat’s da right fing ta do,’ he [Fingwit] said slowly. ‘It sounds like a good idea, but… Wot about all da uvvers?’

>‘Wot uvvers?’ Rattak asked, scratching his head.

>‘Da uvver grots!’ Fingwit said, waving his hand in the general direction of the bulk of Da Meklord’s fleet. ‘On all dose uvver ships, dere are lotz an’ lotz o’ grots wot are no better off dan we were, an’ a lot of ’em probably doin’ worse. Dey’re workin’ away wiv no ’ope, an’ nuffink ta look forward to except maybe not gettin’ a kickin’ at da end of da day.’

>He slapped his chest, growing more and more convinced that what he was saying was correct.

>‘I didn’t put on da coat of Da Red Gobbo just ta save you lot from dat ork. We should be doin’ more! We should be tryin’ ta help all da grots, everywhere!’

The second story Da Gobbo's Demise is about Da Red Gobbo coming to save several grots from being killed by human Chaos Cultists. While they were escaping from the Cultists, Redsnot also chose to let other grots escape before him and even helped rescue his bitter rival Gitzit out of now shared kinship in fighting against the Cultists. Near the end, the Red Gobbo is severely injured, and he passes his identity onto the grot Redsnot by giving him all of his clothes & sniper gun.

>“Listen,’ he [Da Red Gobbo] said. ‘All grots die. We spend da time before it runnin’ if we can, scrappin’ if we ’ave to and hidin’ when we fink we can get away wiv it. Den we die. Wouldn’t ya like to be somefing more dan dat? Run cos you’re lurin’ them in, scrap cos ya like it and hide so ya can sneak up on ’em and stick a shiv in dere back. If you is gonna die anyway, ain’t it better to die on yer own terms? Die cos ya decide to, not cos a boss tells ya to?”

...

>‘Now listen to me. Dis is important. Take da goggles. Yoo’ll need ’em.’

>‘Wot do dey do?’ [asked Redsnot]

>‘Dey is da most important bit,’ Da Gobbo said, lifting the goggles clear with trembling fingers. ‘Dey give ya da look.’

>‘Da look?’

>‘Dey is like a mirror. When a grot sees ya, it sees itself reflected. Dey see demselves.’

>He smiled, but the light was fading from his eyes. Shed of his vestments, he no longer even resembled Da Red Gobbo. Just one more dead grot. The same as all the others.

>Except for the idea.”

Finally, Da Gobbo Rides Again is about a Painboy Stimma trying to create his own Red Gobbo so that it would convince the grots to stop being so obedient to Orks since he feels grots "need" to be sneaky & backstabby for Greenskin society to function. Near the end, it turns out his own personal grot Goggulz had decided to become the Red Gobbo all on his own under his nose. Goggulz decided to do so when he killed another grot for his bag & had an epiphany.

>“It was after I did Stringbag, boss [Stimma]. Dere he was, lyin’ on da floor, not existin’ any more, and dere was his string bag – well, da one he got to replace da one you nicked off ’im. And I fort to meself – well, dat’s mine now. But I fort, hold on a tick, I’m Goggulz. Who am I if I take dis?

>‘So da way I reckoned it den, I was nobody. And I reckon da same is true for da rest of da grots – from me, to da oilers, to Makari and Da Red Gobbo, and everyone else whose name we remember. Which means we’re all as bad as each uvver.’

>Goggulz’s expression was dark for a moment, and then it brightened considerably. ‘Which means we’re all as good as each uvver. So I decided to be Da Red Gobbo.”

On to the other novels, now. The second book is Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh! by Nate Crowley with it being about the grot Makari recounting the life story of Ghazghkull to an Imperial Inquisitor. Makari throughout the story shows several times that he deeply cares about Ghazghkull, not just because he's his boss. He even willingly killed himself over & over (Ghazghkull can resurrect Makari) to convince Ghazghkull to start listening to Gork & Mork again. When Ghazghkull leaves the planet Armageddon with his chief Warbosses and feels depressed, Makari tries to cheer him up with a pep talk.

>“You [Ghazghkull] might win it [Armageddon],’ I squeaked, and then thought better of it. ‘You will win it,’ I corrected myself, even though we both knew I’d been right the first time. ‘And when you do, you’ll have a planet. But if you don’t go back there, you could have a million planets.'

>“When you showed me the Great Green, back when I made the banner, every star in the sky was green. It was the whole galaxy, ruled by orks – not just Hades Hive.’ I was hypy-ventilising now, and my heart felt like it was about to shake itself apart, but I felt green fire in me, and it was like it burned away the fear.

>‘Boss, you managed to get the six most stubborn gits on Urk working together with just your brain and your fists. There’s a whole galaxy of gits just as stubborn, all scrapping with each other when they could be turning the whole thing green – and you’re the only one who can bring ’em together. The gods do believe in you, boss. Bullets, and Ugrak, and all of them lot believe in you, too. I believe in you, and I’m a bleedin’ grot. The only person who don’t believe in Ghazghkull right now, is Ghazghkull.”

Next is Grotsnik: Da Mad Dok by Denny Flowers. For the climax of the book, Grotsnik is about kill the main character of the novel Valtun. His Saddlegit grot Ikor, who is disguised as one of Grotsnik's orderlies, tries to help Valtun by stabbing Grotsnik with an injector, but he is ultimately forced to betray Valtun to save himself from Grotsnik's potential wrath. After Grotsnik removed Valtun's limbs, Ikor shows he truly does care about his former boss to an extent as he actually bothers to come & apologize to Valtun for his betrayal when he easily could have just forgotten about him.

>‘Boss, it’s Ikor. Listen I… I is sorry about what went down before. The dok… I didn’t ’ave a choice. But he’s asleep now. I think. And I just wanted… Anythin’ I can get you, boss? Other than new legs, obviously. You thirsty? Hungry?’

The final novel, I won't bother posting a excerpt from as they isn't any particularly dialogue directly related to the "Grot empathy/compassion idea," but Ufthak's Grot Nizkwik from the Da Big Dakka by Mike Brooks is also deeply loyal to Ufthak and was quite distressed when he was kidnapped by Drukhari.

Very slight spoilers for the Novel Grotsnik: Da Mad Dok as it's a bit of a reveal midway through the novel that the Orks are attacking an Imperial World>! that's been completely taken over by Genestealers.!<

For those who don't care about the Spoilers & don't plan on reading the book yourself, you can go ahead and read the excerpt.

....

Anyway for context, the actual main character of the novel is Valtun the Patient, a Beast Snagga Ork who wants Grotsnik to heal his Squig mount Killface and give it a new leg. Grotsnik agrees but makes Valtun do various tasks for him in return during the Ork invasion of the Genestealer World. The two eventually find themselves in a "nursery" laboratory for creating new Genestealer offspring as Grotsnik wanted to loot some of their drugs, chemicals, etc. for his own work.

>The beast snagga, having concluded his cursory inspection, turned to Grotsnik.

>‘Smells wrong.’

>‘That’s probably just the chems and medicines and wotnot.’

>‘No. It’s somethin’ else. All of this is wrong. The humies too. They ain’t right.’

>‘Yeah? Since when were humies ever right?’

>‘Y’know what I mean,’ Valtun replied tersely. ‘You wanna tell me what these things really are? Otherwise I might just burn this place down and be done with it.’

>‘You do that, and I’ll never be able to fix your squig.’ The dok grinned, retrieving a vial from a workstation. He opened it and sniffed the contents before taking a mouthful, gargling thoroughly and spitting it on the floor.

>‘Disgustin’,’ he said, meeting Valtun’s gaze. ‘Well, that confirms it. You know what we ’ave here? Bunch of skin-thieves.’

Grotsnik proceeds to give a short explanation on how Genestealers work & how they infiltrate human planets, but humans are just "too thick" to notice the corrupted smell of them. He also thinks normal human reproduction is disgusting, lmao.

Valtun's Saddlegit Grot Ikor also describes the unpleasant smell of Genestealer flesh once he starts helping load the equipment from the Laboratory for Grotsnik.

>The dok was muttering now as he picked through some specimens, while the grots scurried back and forth with looted equipment and samples, presumably securing them within the Painwagon. Ikor decided to do likewise, just to avoid raising any suspicion that he was an outsider. It wasn’t bad work, all things considered. Some heavy lifting, but less so than trying to hogtie a squig. No dung either, though admittedly some of the samples looked equally unpleasant. Smelt wrong too. Not just humie wrong, which was just insipid and unpleasant. No, this smelt like… disease. Or rotten meat. Not exactly, of course, because a grot could still choke down rotten meat if it was hungry enough. But Ikor could never have wolfed down this flesh. The thought turned his stomach, like it knew the meat was tainted.

Finally, some Ork Kommandos sneak into the laboratory with intentions to kill Grotsnik, but all of them get ambushed by Genestealers. The Ork Kommando leader Urlak is infected by the Genestealers during combat, and Valtun just instinctively knows something is wrong with the Ork afterwards.

>The snagga turned, to find Urlak leaning against the doorway. His leather coat was torn, stained with blood and the foul creatures’ stench. He looked beaten down, wounded. Even his skin had lost some of its sheen, the green tinged grey and clammy with sweat.

>‘What ’appened?’ he mumbled. ‘Those things came down, took out the ladz, and I… I can’t remember.’

>He frowned, scratching at a wound on his neck, though it was small and already scabbing over. Then he turned to Valtun, perhaps seeking an explanation. The snagga took a step back.

>The smell. It was worse than before. Perhaps it was the way the skin-thief’s blood mingled with the ork’s, the combination somehow even fouler.

>It made him want to reach for his choppa.

From the Warhammer Crime series of books set on the planet Alecto in the Hive Varangantua, Guy Haley's Flesh And Steel is already well-known for a scene where we see several humans be cruelly stripped of their humanity & turned into servitors.

However, I also want to mention some earlier excerpts from the novel which detail the very debased, disturbing, and overall wasteful lives Imperial nobility can live due to their tremendous wealth. For context, the main character of Flesh and Steel is Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis who is the estranged son & member of the wealthy House Dymaxion, and he has to attend a dinner party at the Dymaxion Promontory/Palace.

>As I got closer, the lawns around [the Dymaxion Promontory] were increasingly crammed with vacuous morons exchanging pointless chat. As usual, they’d arranged themselves into circles of influence as predictable as the patterns of atoms. Those with the lowest social rank were farthest out, all of them furiously trying to talk their way into a higher ring. I wonder what a citizen plucked from a shitty hab would think of this place, or of the nobles in their laces and frills**, their skin tight and thin with too many rejuvenat treatments, the reek of failing organs only partly hidden behind overpowering alien perfumes.** Augments wheezed to keep corpulent bodies that should have died centuries ago upright. Strange, semi-sentient creatures gambolled between them, engineered from vat-stock culled from across the stars. Vicious beasts reworked to cowering obedience coiled around shapely legs stolen from lesser people. It doesn’t stop with the animals. There are worse than servitors there. Gene-engineered courtesans strutting the lawns, ready to offer any decadent pleasure at a word. Body slaves rebuilt to perverted ideals of beauty serving drinks and sweetmeats and flattery. Servants scurrying everywhere, overdressed, overworked, underpaid. All technically free, but how can any of them be while the nobles play their ancient games? The whole place stinks of fear, the fear of death, the fear of insignificance. It’s a show. A carnival of horrors.

After being shown around a while by his cousin Previnus, Symeon meets his mother at the party who looks quite unnerving to him due her Rejuvenat treatments. For those who don't know, "Rejuvenat/Juvenat" is a broad term that refers to the various anti-aging treatments, medicines, surgeries, etc. used throughout the Imperium.

>‘Hello, mother,’ I said.

>My mother was safe behind a fortress of ruffled skirts and stacked collars. A corset squeezed her into a shape that looked anatomically impossible, though it was probable that some body artisan had rearranged her innards to fit the new fashion. If we’d wanted to embrace, I’d have needed a crane to lower me in from above. But we don’t embrace. It’s seen as weak. Instead she lent me a hand as purposefully limp as everyone else’s.

>‘I wondered if you were coming,’ she said distantly. She wasn’t happy to see me.

>'Well, you know. Father’s natal day and all,’ I said.

>She kept her head tilted back the whole time, so she could look down her nose at me. It is a very pretty nose. Access to regen and anti-agapic treatments means she looks younger than me, which is frankly discomfiting. She is my father’s third wife, and she wasn’t chosen for her brains. When I was young, a lot of my friends made uncouth comments about my mother’s assets.

>What can I say? Rich people are shits.

Finally, Symeon gives another brief description on the various forms of entertainment that can be found at his father's party.

>Father’s revel spread across the whole palace. There were different banquets in different rooms, dishes from a thousand worlds, dances, a hundred different orchestras, examples of humanity drawn from every sort of tribe, activities of myriad perversions, and places where other appetites could be sated, from the mundane to the most deeply jaded. The whole thing was designed as spectacle, a gross and calculated display of wealth. People are starving everywhere. What this festivity discarded would have fed thousands.

As many of you probably know, as Orks in Warhammer 40k constantly fight over their lifespans, they gradually grow stronger & larger in size with the largest of their race (usually) being the Bosses & Warbosses.

The Bad Moons Ork Ufthak Blackhawk is the main character of Mike Brooks' short story & two novels Where Dere's Da Warp Dere's a Way, Brutal Kunnin, & Da Big Dakka, respectively. In Dere's Da Warp Dere's a Way (and briefly recapped in the beginning of Brutal Kunnin), Ufthak loses his entire body and has his head sown onto the dead body of his mob's boss Badgit Snazzhammer's body by the Painboy Drozfang:

>‘Wotever you’z finkin’, yer gonna ’ave to do it quick,’ Ufthak told him flatly, as darkness began to encroach on his vision.

>‘Fankfully, da raw materials are at ’and,’ Drozfang grinned, and pursed his leathery lips to emit a piercing whistle. High-pitched grunts and swearing heralded the arrival of the dok’s grot ‘disorderlies’, apparently towing something heavy. They stopped next to Ufthak, and he turned his head to look at it.

>It was Badgit Snazzhammer’s body. Huge, battle-scarred and untouched apart from the small point of completely lacking a head, thanks to the tinboy.

>‘Now,’ Drozfang said, producing an intimidatingly large cleaver and placing it at the base of Ufthak’s neck. ‘Dis may ’urt a bit…’

>Ufthak hadn’t really registered the blow given that, percentage-wise, he wasn’t losing much more than he had already. The staples that the dok used to fix his head onto Snazzhammer’s neck – which had been ‘tidied up’ with the same cleaver – only registered as minor pricks of discomfort.

After this, Ufthak does spend some time growing the regular way by fighting & winning offscreen until the time of Da Big Dakka novel when he leads his splinter Waaagh army into a subrealm of Commorragh to attack some Drukhari raiders.

While there, he's hit by a Drukhari flesh gauntlet. This would have caused his muscles to grow uncontrollably until he exploded out of his skin, but Drozfang gives him a counter drug to stop the growth. Immediately afterwards, Ufthak is sedated and brought to a holding cell by the Drukhari, and these three substances within him have interesting results on Ufthak's body...

>The cell was dimly lit, so much so that the slave was unlikely to be able to see anything within, but Dhaemira’s eyes could penetrate the gloom well enough. However, she was struggling to believe them.

>‘The force field does not confer any sort of magnifying effect?’ she asked, already sure that she knew the answer.

>‘No,’ the beastmaster said. It was hard to tell with his mask on, but Dhaemira thought she could sense a sort of stoic amazement emanating from the other drukhari. The beastmaster knew exactly what he was looking at, but he had no idea how it had come to be.

>‘Then what has happened?’ Dhaemira demanded. ‘I fought this beast, not a day ago!’

>‘We believe it was injected with electrosteroids by a flesh gauntlet,’ Karfynd said. ‘Normally that would cause massive, uncontrolled muscle growth that would rip its skin open, but it seems to have been given some sort of counter-injection by one of its own kind. Then the sedatives used to put it under in order to bring it here slowed its metabolism, giving the counter-agent time to work, and now…’ He gestured. ‘Well, some of the growth has occurred, but as you can see, not how we would have expected.’

>The dark mass within the cell sat up from where it had been lying on the floor, and Dhaemira met the gaze of two red eyes in a head the size of her torso. Then the ork heaved itself to its feet, its head going up, and up, and up…

I just think it's funny how Brooks came up with not one but two different ways for Ufthak to cheat the Ork system of growing.