Marcus sat on a rock, watching his grots brawl in the mud, and finally understood what he had become.
Greenskins are not like the Orcs in other fantasy stories where you need a mom and dad.
They are a fungus that thinks it’s a person.
They are not plants.
They don’t photosynthesize.
They need to eat like any beast, they just can eat anything that was once alive – mushrooms, squigs, rats, rotten meat, even their own dead if they’re hungry enough.
The secret is in their blood.
Every greenskin’s blood is thick with fungal spores.
They are born with no male or female.
They just…
leak.
As they live, as they breathe, as they fight, they shed spores.
When they die, they release a massive cloud of them.
Those spores sink into the earth.
If the ground is damp and has enough rot – blood, dung, dead leaves – they grow.
Not into one mushroom, but into a vast, underground mat of fungus.
From that mat, life sprouts in order.
First, the strange beasts called **Squigs**.
Little balls of teeth and legs.
Some are edible and spicy – the bigger and redder, the spicier.
Only the boss is allowed to eat the biggest ones.
Some are Hair Squigs, they bite onto your bald head and become a living wig.
Very fashionable.
Other greenskins will kill you to steal a good hair squig.
There are Face-Biter Squigs, Paint Squigs that spit color, and so on.
If you can imagine it, there’s a Squig for it.
After Squigs come Snotlings.
Then Goblins.
Then finally, Orcs.
The whole cycle takes months.
That’s why everyone in the Old World says: If greenskins appear somewhere, burn everything.
Burn the bodies, burn the ground.
Because if you leave even a patch of spores, a year later there will be a whole tribe again.
Marcus looked at his brawling goblins.
Every time they bled, every skin flake they lost in the fight was seeding his field.
He had been farming correctly without knowing it.
He’d even thought about chopping up a few useless snotlings and scattering them.
He shook his head.
Too early.
He needed every hand he had.
Another thing – those spores make greenskins terrifyingly tough.
When they get hurt, their body floods with growth hormones.
That’s why a greenskin who almost died yesterday can be jumping around today, and why the winner of a big fight often comes back…
bigger.
More WAAAGH!
A *ding* pulled him back.
> **NEW QUEST: MAKE IT STINKY**
> Da fungus field is hungry!
It needs more rot!
Da grots are shittin’ everywhere except where it matters!
> **Objective: Make a Dung Pit.
40 piles of dung on the fungal field.**
> Reward: Fungal field growth +15%
Marcus looked at the field.
It was true.
The spots where Snotlings had been fighting and bleeding and where Squig dung lay were sprouting tiny new mushrooms.
The clean, dug-up spots were dead.
He stopped the brawlers.
He had them dig a big pit right at the edge of the fungal mat.
Not a biogas digester – just a stinking pit.
When most of the tribe gathered, he kicked a goblin who was shitting by the river.
“FROM NOW ON!
ALL OF YOOZ!
YOU SHIT AND PISS IN DIS PIT!
NOT IN DA RIVER!
NOT IN MY HUT!
IN DA PIT!
ANYONE WHO SHITS OUTSIDE, I BREAK HIS LEGS AND USE HIM AS FERTILIZER!”
He assigned three of the biggest goblins, gave them sticks, to be “Dung Guard.” They looked incredibly proud.
Without dung and rot, more land is useless.
He also had to rethink weapons.
He had sent all his goblins to cut wood.
They brought back branches.
But the canyon wasn’t lacking in minerals.
It was lacking in brains.
This was the Worlds Edge Mountains.
There was iron everywhere.
His goblins just thought iron ore was “shiny heavy rock” and threw it away.
He needed a Mek.
Or at least a goblin smart enough to know metal.
For now, wooden spears would have to do.
He watched his naked goblins fighting over rags – they were naked because when Grom left, he took all the good loot.
“Fine,” Marcus growled, gripping Old Boss’s Choppa.
“Tomorrow, lumber mill is done.
We make spears.
Then we find something to krump and take its shiny bits.
That’s how greenskins get armored.
Not by building tin cans in a cave.”