Yes, yes, we've been over that. My response was to the assertion that death by old age besets Orks at 35-40, because the ork lifespan is "by canon, natural."

I was clarifying that "natural" means very different things when you have medical technology and don't. Orks are no more doddering old men who need canes at 40 than humans are doddering old men who need canes at 60.

I think a few other things are being forgotten when it comes to the initial numbers (though this won't skew the percentages). Things like the VITAS (http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/VITAS)

2010 - "Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome (VITAS) kills off a quarter of the world's population."
2022 - "VITAS 2 claims another 10%"

Which impacted poorer demographics significantly harder tha the wealthier due in large part to symptomatic releif.

Put another way, those plagues hit places like India, China and Puyalup much harer than that "25%" while the upper-class North American population probably saw less than half those rates. If nothing else, it served to dramatically improve the resource drain of population vs. the natural carrying capacity of Gaia. The 25%+10% is a world-wide average, so over a third of the world's total population died, but of those numbers, I expect a log was in the impoverished Third-world (and the un- and under-insured in North America).

on the other hand, orks also have a much higher body value than humans. while it may not make it particularly probable that they survive, it would certainly make it more probable.

plus, that still leaves a ridiculously low number of orks, given their birth rates etc.

The question there would be if BODy really factored into survival rates. I don't remember TOO much detail abou the pathology of the plagues, myself. It's entirely possible that good medical care could eliminate most of what was really doing the killing, like high fevers or dehydration for example. Dehydration and fever don't make exceptions for size or health of the victim, and they can be as deadly as the toxins in the system. Now that I say that, dialysis or immuno-stimulants might have had some effect. And just because you have a high BODy stat, doesn't automatically make you HEALTHIER (game rules aside). BODy is an abstraction based on physical size, endurance, health and several other factors; Orcs are ROBUST, but if they live in squallor and eat out of dumpsters (like early after the Awakening many outcast goblinized orcs DID) they are going to have weaker immune systems. Sure, there's more mass for the bugs to work their way through, but the actual ability to STOP the bugs would be less.

But no we're whistling in the dark, and have (surprise, it's DumpShock) drifted off my OP a hair. Those plagues were single events, and unless they DRAMATICALLY singled out the orc metavariants over any other, I don't see how it would materially have affected current population percentages and continued growth rate.

New adventure hook? Ares invents STD to kill off Ork populations?[ /crockpot conspiracy theory]

What's so crackpot about it? Well, ok, make it Aztechnology.

I was cracking wise at the conspiracy theory of AIDS being man-made to kill off africans. Given the parallels to black society, I thought it fitting, if dark.

Make it Shiawase. Nobody ever does anything with Shiawase.

Those are quite shocking numbers for those of us who study such things, but unfortunately the world of Shadowrun doesn't really delve into the social and demographic consequences of such a catastrophe.

hmmm... yeah, the only thing i can think of as a major plot point involving shiawase heavily has been the shiawase decision. so it's been what... 20 years now since anything big happened with them?

seems to me if we were gonna lose a mega, we should've kept CATco and ditched shiawase... anything that did happen with them was more with them in the curtains than anything (ex: a part of fuchi went to shiawase when it broke apart, i think there was a run where shiawase nuke plant had a glitch that caused a major embarassment for them in the brainscan arc, and ummm... empress hitomi is from the shiawase family, i guess. other than that, their major feature as a mega appears to be super-blandness. i mean, really... that's the most noteworthy stuff i can come up with for them)

Shocking by modern standards. Compared to the successive waves of the Black Death?

Besides, there are enough dark hints that they were genetically (where you no longer worry particularly about the viability of the host organism for further propogation and rapid onset andlethality are possible) or magically (where you have mana pulling the strings) engineered to be as deadly as they were.

*waggles hand back and forth*

Yes and no. The way the world is written, they're the quiet mega, the one churning away in the background making money where the other megas's deign to invest. I'm trying to remember if they own Gaeatronics or not (Seattle's fusion power plant). Killing them off wouldn' be particular interesting, and the other megas like them right were they are - quietly making money on the crap most other mega's executives don't want on their expensive designer shoes.

But that's a completely different level of development, technology and several orders of magnitude difference in population, plus the Black Death took a century to traverse the world. Even a 10% mortality rate today would be almost 700 million people. The logistics of corpse-removal would be a major challenge just by themselves. Humanity's never encountered a calamity of this scale in such a short period of time.

i dunno. i think you could just as easily say that the other megas split up the minor stuff in the background between them. i mean, honestly, if you just got rid of shiawase and split all their business between the other megas, would you even really notice?

also, shiawase used to own the nuke plant back in the day. they do not now, and as i recall it was partly because of the embarassing power outage that happened as part of brainscan.

Ah, but it's NOT that big a change in many of the poorest parts of the world at all! (That was my point about the higher death rates probable in the 3rd World nations because of their similarities to that time.) Furthermore, that's why I brought up the "engineered" aspect to help explain transmissibility. But don't forget, the Black Death traveled by ship - slow sailing ships that visited port after port. THIS plague travels on supersonic transports from one point to any other in just hours. That's why the danger of a true worldwide endemic is actually higher now than ever: air trvel.

I'm not doubting for a moment the level of difficulty inherent in a 50% dieoff in an isolated area (or possibly even 100% in an isolated primitive village by the time secondary concerns set in). I don't think the authors discounted it either, they just didn't see reason to spend column-inches on something that was over decades before even 1st Ed.

Still doesn't make it an interesting or exciting plot turning point. *grin*


Ah, thanks.

my point about shiawase is that you could pretty near remove them from the setting and not notice them. this is not an observation that it would be a good plot point to remove them, rather i'm saying that it would be better to have either kept the mega that was making things interesting, or to at the very least do something with shiawase, otherwise they may as well not even be there. (truth be told, saeder-krupp also doesn't seem very interesting, but at least has something of a personality, courtesy of lofwyr)

The books do not list the infantile mortality rate. In the animal kingdom animals with a high birth rate usually have a high mortality rate. I think the 35 year lifespans-compared with humans at 65 and elves and dwarves at over a century, is an equalizing factor. One of the earlier books said that orks do age to elderly at 35 unless they had goblinized which means they have a Human lifespan.

I think more importantly is the infant mortality rate though. If you look at Gators and turtles they lay a lot of eggs but most do not live to maturity. Trust me, giving birth to one child at a time is more than enough.

It would be interesting to see if wealthy ork women have 'litters' or if the size of their birthings do decrease as the environment improves.

You mean some kind of psychosomatic feedback mechanism? THAT's a cool idea. After all, UGE and Goblinization are both results of mana interaction with the magus factor/meta gene, so a "smarter" evolution factor would be completely legitimate and believable.

Exactly. Many orks live in poverty and they suffer malnutrition and exposure. So their bodies go for the max. A well off Ork though does not 'need' to worry as much about her children surviving so her body does not 'produce' as many eggs when the mothers 'comfort' level is at a certain point.

Remember also that the children of a litter will be smaller than of a single birthing. The mother can only stretch so far. Even with the extra bulk orks carry they are still relatively the same size as human mothers. I know how far each of my two girls 'pushed' me and they are two years apart. If I was to carry 6-8 at a time instead of just one, there is no way they could have been as large at birth and smaller babies are much more vulnerable.

I think this idea is total genius. Score for you, DLN.

Orks didn't exist for the first plague as Goblinization started after 2010.

Even later. The first round of Goblinization didn't start till 2021.

Great points. I know one of the first things I thought of when I came across Orks having litters was: Ork ladies have only 2 breasts, yes? Given what I know about my wife breast feeding my one daughter, those breasts are only going to produce so much milk and you are going to have some malnutritioned infant orks ... makes me wonder if Ork moms give preferential treatment to the infants they think are most likely to survive. What a totally dark thought, now I am picturing Ork moms putting a few of the litter in a dumpster or mercy cullings that the Ork dad has to commit. Maybe that is why Orks have higher stats in some areas, the other ones with the lesser stats just don't live past the boob, let alone being a toddler in a seriously impoverished enviroment?

Other than that dark thought, I wonder if on average Ork ladies have bigger tits, maybe making human ladies who get boob jobs jealous on some level? Ork ladies who do cosmetic surgery on the teeth rather than boobs to work in the sexual entertainment industry?

Personally, I've always got the impression the life expectancy for Orks had less to do with metabolism and more to do with their rough and tumble place in society. Like not living past 20 in the ghetto or some such. What are you willing to bet gangs have a larger number of Orks in them?

Maybe the male to female birth ratio is off, which would even things out? Say out of 3 litters of 4 there are only 2-3 female births? Which would go to show why there are so many ork gangers, because they are sexually frustrated and need to beat crap up.

Or at minimum, the females are more likely to die during pregnancy/child birth, which means a mom has an effective cap of perhaps 4 children (and the remainder think 'huh, seems like having kids is a piss poor idea, thank you very much'.)

LOL! That's a valid theory too. But while Trolls are more scarce than orks, many of them eventually become gangers or some other "muscular job", do they have litters too? I'm away from my 2nd edition right now to check this.

No, trolls have only one child at a time, but they also have a longer lifespan (by about 10-15 years, if memory serves).

Thanks nezumi. And yes, Trolls live a little more than Orks.

I guess I don't get the issue here. India, China, and a number of other second and third world countries are massively over populated, one kid at a time, with no cyberware or magic-and plagues are pretty common place, all things considered.

I see no plausible reason why Orks wouldn't quickly outnumber other metatypes. Now just like in the real world, numbers don't always equate to power.

Another thought I was having on the death rate on pretty much any meta would be the lack of decent health and healthcare, since I presume times are tougher in a world that lacks universal healthcare and Employment Insurance benifits. If anywhere did keep those particular bonuses, I would try to emigrate there if I was a SR character, since working from the world's current finiancial debacle the panic / desperation in the US isn't present in Canada for the most part that I am aware of with those items in place to aleviate that portion of the survival game of life.

I suspect just beyond how a ork lady is able to physically nurture that many kids, cultures of violence and poverty preventing access to healthy early childhood, longterm healthcare from doctors and dentists, education on healthy lifestyle, and lack of funds for nutritional diets would make death much more common in some meta types such as orks. Living conditions might also make plagues more common among dense young populations of orks.

I like the idea of a gender imbalance, that would offset the population surge too. We are use to a roughly 50/50 split on gender (though both of my children are girls so I am not the best example). But if there was a substanilly large number of males to females say 1:6 this might also keep the population from exploding. Sure there would be lots of males but the limit on fmeales to procreate would hold it in check.

And I have 5 nephews...so we are almost even!

You can also be sure, all ork females are on the pill in the industrialized world (do they really want a litter of kids?). Paid for by Humanis.

There are lots of other factors which are not specified that could effect population growth as well.

• Just knowing the average life span of an ork doesn't show you what the distribution of those death are. It's possible that orks that reach maturity live on average just as long as humans, but that they have 50% mortality before they reach maturity. Since large litters and shorter pregnancies generally equate to low birth weight and underdeveloped babies, orks might be more fragile than humans for the first couple years of life until their growth surpasses that of their smoothie counterparts.
• Ork births may in multiples, but maybe orks are less likely to concieve in the first place.
• Orks reach sexual maturity a couple years earlier than standard humans, but maybe they lose their fertility at a much earlier age also, which would result in a similar or smaller window of opportunity for conception.

So if orks matured earlier and gave birth in litters of 5 or 6, but had a lower chance of base fertility and a very high infant/youth mortality, and had a 1/3rd - 2/3rds distribution of females to males, and had menopause onset in their women at 25, then their populations might not grow any faster than the baseline human population.

Here's a thought also: How many countries do you think determine age of consent based upon metatype?

Uh, none, probably. And as the trend globally is for age of consent to level out at about 18...

...Think for a minute. How old an ork boy (or girl) is when they start puberty...and how long they have to wait before they can have sex without it being called statutory rape.

I know, in the Barrens it probably makes no difference. But outside the Barrens?

I don't know about that. I imagine that portions of the NAN could possibly be more progressive in this regard, especially some of the meta-dominated portions.

I like the gender imbalance idea. In my experience, I've seen... five? six male orks? Yet the only female I've ever seen is the one I played myself (oh yeah, and that scary raven shaman in the book).

The only female metatype that seems less rare is dwarves, not that we'd be able to tell ;P

Must... not... quote... that... movie... about... 250... pound... dwarves... and beards... for... leverage...

Well to borrow from Gygax- nothing a dawrf likes to do after a long day at work is run his fingers through a long silky beard.

The SR art makes them all look like 3 foot tall Dolly Parton clones.

*boggles*

"Well shit, I'm a blivet!"

Wait....Don't orks eat their young?

Only the redneck ones...

[P]ork - the other white meat...

Sounds like something Humanis would say, anyway. However, I can't imagine, with 6 squaling infants, no money for food, and living in a shack you share with four other people, the kids are especially well cared for. I'm sure fatalities from other causes are tremendously high.

Yes we have FAB instead

Hmmm this is interesting. The only thing I know about is rats. I had friends that used to raise rats (the cuddly friendly type, not Ben). Since pet stores breed rats to feed snakes, these types of rats live in horrible conditions. Dozens of rats crammed in small cages, poor nutrition, and etc. After a while of this the average rat litter goes down to 3 or 4 live births. If you take a breeding female out of these conditions (my friend threatened to call the aspca, and the pet store stopped breeding rats), and place the rat in clean spacious conditions with good nutrition (and show some affection, not sure if that makes a difference or not), the litter size can skyrocket up to 8 (as happened in this case). So by improving the conditions, not only do more rats (read orcs) survive child birth, but the litter size may increase as well.