I’ve been sinking my little vampire teeth into the Mortal Realms and gobbling up as many stories from Warhammer’s Age of Sigmar setting as possible. Initially it never grabbed me – I have Middle-earth, who needs the Mortal Realms or the Old World or whatever generic trash they’ve come up with?

And by most accounts early Age of Sigmar fiction was pretty rough or, at the very least, sparse. The Old World of Warhammer Fantasy Battles never tempted me much because it looked so much like The Lord of the Rings but somehow more historical, even if the lore was extremely rich and well-explored.

But the more I poke around in the Mortal Realms the more I find weird and intriguing characters and stories. There are sundry notes of Tolkien along with mythology and lots of other influences; Age of Sigmar is not unique. But it is bold.

Rob the Honest Wargamer said as much and I thought a very bold statement itself. But I think he’s right.

I don’t know much about the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering, nor am I especially well-read in the multiverse of contemporary fantasy, but Age of Sigmar is so expansive, so mythical, so intense, that to claim it is the most original fantasy world going may not be that far off.

But for every god-beast or aether stone or cataclysmic, multi-world shaking event, there is something grounded and familiar. Most of all, to me, are da boyz.

And yet…they’re not really da boyz are they?

For the orks of the far future are, as I’m learning, quite apart from their brethren in the Mortal Realms. I’m not especially well-versed in the history of Warhammer, but my understanding is that the Space Orks were, at the start, simply that: the scifi version of fantasy orcs which were, in turn, derivative of their first modern incarnation from Middle-earth. Since then the Orks and Orruks have grown steadily apart, the final cleave perhaps coming when the Orcs of Warhammer Fantasy were officially rebranded as Orruks in the Age of Sigmar.

They bear many of the same qualities: big green brutes with a spectacular East London dialect and a penchant for fighting absolutely anything at any time.

It seems, however, that the similarities mostly end there. The Orks of Warhammer 40,000 are perpetually funny and obsessed by machines. They co-exist with their greenskin cousins as grots, snotlings, and squigs (many, many different kinds of squigs) can be found in any Ork army. They utilize a runic alphabet (sort of) and are a massive conglomerate of different “klanz” and “kultur.”

In the Mortal Realms the Orruks are a bit more basic. The Bonesplitterz and Ironjawz, at last, are each a category of orc typified in many fantasy settings. Savage, ritualistic, borderline problematic mystics and big, mean, iron-clad fighters, respectively. There is plenty of humor and British sarcasm found in their dialogue, but that is limited and da boyz of the Mortal Realms (especially the realm of Ghur) are often treated as cannon fodder or an impersonal force of nature.

The Kruleboyz create a certain amount of diversity among the Warclans but they feel more like a fantasy version of 40k Blood Axes than anything else. They’re still far more serious and more typical than Space Orks.

Grots (and hobgrots) can be found in the various Orruk armies but they are few and far between as most of the little goblins live within their own faction, the Gloomspite Gitz, who also exist as a home for squigs and troggoths (Trolls). As such, the Orruks are part of the broader Destruction faction, finding themselves allied at times with troggoths, Ogors, Gargants, and more — something you would almost never find in the grim darkness of the far future.

While I’m still learning, I find the differences interesting. The models are exquisite and I plan to continue collecting from both ranges (including Old World and Blood Bowl) because one can never have enough boyz, but the Space Orks remain a group apart from all other representations of Orcs in popular fantasy, even those within the same intellectual property.