And you wonder why so many threads here discuss if mana based invisibility spells affect cybereyes, and not just say it is Magic and leave it alone........

WMS

As a father of (non orc) twins I will say this...when we found out it was twins my wife ate enough meat to put any carnivore to shame (including extinct reptiles). Without magic and the fact that this is a fucking game it would be unrealistic for any woman to have viable, multiple fetuses without magic or a high lifestyle devoted entirely to protein.

My Niece has Fraternal Twin boys, "Attila" and "Genghis" the Hun Brothers. So far her husband has kept her distracted so they will not try and have more children.

In his family line Identical Twins are more common, in my Niece's Fraternal Twins are more common. His worst nightmare is her having a set of Identical Twins, and an set of Fraternal Twins in the same birth.

Again a Ork female would need more of a magic digestion system to wring out the most of any food she consumes.

WMS

Lol, yeah. that would suck!

Magic digestion, brought to you by Aztechnology. We only require a small blood sacrifice...

With the small cost of the first of your seven children we, the fine and upstanding people at Aztechnology Magical Medical Services, will enhance your digestive systems to make sure that those other six ork babies are properly fed and developed.

Or we could simply say that orks, due to extra long intestines, are somewhat more vulnerable to colon cancer than other metatypes and their colonoscopies take longer and they don't have to poop as often if you enforce pooping in your games. It doesn't have to be magic.

There is nothing that says orcs are required to reproduce every 6 months and every reason for them not to. Orc women are gonna say thats enough after they push out there first couple of litters its not like they are animals who will keep on having kids until they keel over. They'll head down to the local street doc and get the old tubes tied or at least the pill.

Or visit the wrong free clinic, which will do that for them without their permission or knowledge at all.

Heh, Humanis free clinic. So evil...

So typical.

There is also the question that even if Orks tend to give birth in litters does that mean they are otherwise as fertile as a human. A human female will ovulate about once a month but what if for Orks its every three or four. With a litter of four to eight kids Orcs could only be capable of reproducing twice in their life time and still have high populations.
You can also easily say that unless the Ork women is fairly well to do a third pregnancy would usually be fatal, couple that with the high morality rate among SINless and you've got a large growing underclass population but not enough to carpet bomb the earth, and just because Orks don't reach maturity until age 12. Doesn't mean they'll start having babies right away. The risk of a pregnancy of four to eight can certainly put the fear of reproduction into them for another eight years leaving plenty of time for even more of the SINless to die.

I've also found that fluff text is often written as if it was a real book in the Sixth World and not. In the early editions Ghouls were depicted as monsters as their name would suggest until that whole ordeal with the nurse and now ghouls enjoy some rights in many areas. Sometimes the book plays to the stereotype of the race before they break it. So the fluff about Ork pregnancies could be exerations.

You could even say the magic that caused the UGE gave Ork their reproduction rates so they could survive in the world they were being born into to as a vast majority would end up being SINless due to their appearance.

Trolls have a more normal reproduction despite even being more fearsome because they can get work as security and bouncers more relatively easily. "Funny story most people don't like to pick fights with Trolls"

Lastly you could say Orks ARE carpet bombing the earth its just the oldest born Ork can't be older then 52 as Goblinization happened on April 21st in 2021.

Ork pregnancy rates aside, assuming we rewrite that to suit our needs the FACT is metahumans have different lifespans then humans. Elves for example are estimated to have a life span of centuries.

Interesting to read a thread all about orc fecundity, including comments about female fertility, and noone has mentioned the increasing number of Jaffas today. Taking the most common explanation for this to be environmental toxins, I'm surprised anyone in the Barrens can have kids.

Personally I don't have a problem with orcs having multiple births. I don't think it breaks the setting, or even affects it in any way. I'm pretty sure that I read the devs say some place that most runners barely make it out of their twenties. Quite why we should worry too much about our fictional characters potential for having a family, when they are as likely as not going to get capped on a run before they hit 30.

The theoretical total life production of 96 orcs requires no down time between births and pregnancy, which we have no evidence for. In the animal kingdom there are examples of fertility being interrupted when a mother is nursing young. Human fertility is affected by diet and physical condition. I agree that bringing 4 or more orcs to complete gestation will take its toll on the mother, and would submit that until the mother is able to replace the lost protein and fat she will remain unreceptive to men, and perhaps even infertile.

The low birth-weight of orc babies, consequent to their shorter gestation is not necessarily as debilitating as it is for human babies, seeing as orcs have an increased body compared to humans. Body, as any fans of the tank/bullet sponge archetype can tell us, directly equates to toughness.

The reduced gestation period also helps in regards of the theoretically increased demand for nutrients. The mother will have an increased appetite for a shorter period, and her body can store nutrients in advance of pregnancy. I fully expect BBOs to be the norm , which in a culture that idolises leanness, might contribute to the prejudice experienced by orcs.

Actually used this topic as a humanis plot in past game. Humanis clinics offering free birth control and sterilization. Even had a pamphlet handout espousing the benefits and bonus's of signing up.

Why are the slums full of orks? They breed like rabbits and age faster then the rest of us. Imagine the drain on local resources medical and housing concerns.

Of course in past ages this would have been a benefit to a brutal warlike culture, bred strong and fast and leave your old and infirm behind. From a fiction stand point it just sounds cool.

That's what I was refering to. Just couldn't remember where I found it.

I was unaware that there was an increase in the population of genetically engineered pouched alien warrior-slaves. I imagine that this is partially because of their long life spans, but I'd think the dwindling supply of symbiotes and limited supply of tritonin would severely limit their population growth. Nor do I see what
Israeli oranges or candies derived from them have to do with ork reproduction. And certainly, there is only one neoconservative Lincoln biographer. But, I do imagine improved nutrition has contributed a great deal to the increased number of exceptional well bowled cricket deliveries.

Elves are actually a worse reproductive danger than orks. While they have fewer kids at a time they live substantially longer and remain fertile substantially longer. An Elf can pop out more kids over a lifetime than an ork possibly could and there will be more elf generations living at once than there will be generations of any other species. So while orks have the head start it is the elves who'll carpet the world over the long-haul. Slow and steady wins the race.

Yeah, I dont know much about gestation periods or pregnancies, but I am not sure that the average lifespans listed in the book were affected by social problems. I mean, take the Elves for example. They live "several hundreds" of years. With all of the elves that are in gangs or being shadowrunners, not to mention the war that the elven nation has waged by California, dont you think that the average would go down quite a bit? Its not easy to live for several hundreds of years in the Shadowrun universe without being prone to war, natural disaster, or accident. Unless the actual lifespan of elves is actually over one thousand years, then I dont think they factored in the sociological factors to the average lifespan of the races.

They don't say the Elf Life expectancy is hundreds of years but the life span is hundreds of years.
"Thanks to metabolic tests performed, it has been shown that Elves have a lifespan of several hundred years."
Life Expectancy is only phrased for Orks, Trolls and Humans whom have had the possibility to show signs of aging in the past 50 years.

FYI, you missed a definition.