We know that Orks are relatively short lived (35 years or so). But during their brief time amongst us, how does the rest of their life progress.

1. Pregnancy - How long?
2. Infantcy - How long are they completely dependant on an adult to survive? For humans it is possible for children as young as 4-5 years to begin caring for themselves.
3. Childhood - At what age do they enter puberty and become capable of procreation?
4. Adulthood - At what age is their physical maturation complete? Humans hit this in their late teens and early twenties depending on the individual.
5. Physical Decline - At what age do they start to show physical impairment due to age? Humans start running into slower healing and physical decline in their 40's (and yes humans can be in fantastic physical shape in their 40's however the ammount of training/ effort does increase as time goes on).
6. Mental Development - Do Orks develop mentally at the same rate as humans? Are there lots of physically mature orks with the social and mental faculties of 10 year olds?
7. Legal age - When do Orks achieve their majority in society? I can imagine Russian army units with 14 yr old ork privates (or younger).

8. Effects of Socioeconomic status on other aspects of life cycle.

[EDIT] Apologies, my spouse is in public health research. This one gets pointed out to me for so much of what I come up with that it's like a reflex now.

No apologies needed, it is very relevant.
If orks are discriminated against, which seems to fit in canon, then they are likely to be on the lower rungs of the socieoeconomic ladder. This will likely lead to earlier adn more frequent pregancies. There would normally be higher infant mortality rates as well, however the BODY boost that orks get should overwhelm the effect of poor living conditions....even the weaniest ork kiddo is healthier than many adult humans.

In fact, there should be signifigant competition in the poorer areas of the world for basic reasources and the orks should be edging out the humans if there is no outside intervention from the wealthier elements of scociety.

IIRC they delevop 33% faster. Thus

1. 6 months for a litter
2. around 3
3. guessing round 8-10
4. 12
5. no idea really 26 and a half via the 33% faster method
6. I'm gonna say also accelerated not senseical other wise.
7. Well using UK law 11.5 is the age of consent and also the age to join the armed forces.
8. I'm gonna guess Ork only schools for the wealthy other wise they are going to have problems.

As for the life span I'm gussing its lower than it should be. Due to the huge amounts of SINless and poverty skricken Orks. When you have litters of up to 6 kids at once your going to have economic problems. Useing a life span of 75 as the avarage for humans (bound to get higher in the future) you get orks living to about 50.

This is all mostly extrapolation for the few cannon bits of info we have.

According to SR1's "Metahumanity" page on Orks, we know their typical life span is between 35 and 40, their gestation period is 187 days, and they usually bear four children (but sometimes six-eight). Suckling time is seven months, and they hit puberty (on average) at ten.

I recall from an earlier sourcebook that Orks didn't get special legal status as far as legal maturity goes, but that was in the UCAS. I imagine it would add to their frustration, lack of respect for the law, lack of willingness to fit in, etc, etc...not being able to drive a car legally until several years after being physically mature, not being able to vote until roughly mid-life? Aging and maturing faster than everyone around you would probably already add to metaracism and poverty at encouraging a fast paced, violent, lifestyle...but aging and maturing faster while being denied the legal benefits of your physical maturity? Probably ticks 'em off something fierce.

Useing a bit of Earthdawn Orks are/where a warrior race. I can see this in both temperament and their perfidious breeding rate. The fact they mature at ~12 and are stronger and tougher than humans and elves puts them on the lower rungs in many ways. It also means that military organsations would likely be full of Orks in comparison to other metatypes.

By cannon Orks are almost more common than humans as well the world would have to adapt to them. Unlike Trolls and Dwarfs who are rarer and in most cases suffer a bit due to this.

Or'zat "their" lanuage also lends it self as a good way to see how Orks are culturaly. A quick look show th3e sixth world useage is one that tends to relate to gangs, violnce and crime alot. Make of that what you want.

In the novel Streets of Blood, a young Ork woman achieves age of majority (allowing her to go out and get drunk) at the same age as everyone else in England (16 or 18, I don't recall).

Per Corp Guide, Evo considers orks to be adults at 13 (page 38)

It seams odd not to make allowances for Orks. I mean at 18 is the equivalent in every way as a 24 year old of any other metatype. I am alos sure diffrent corps/conturys do this differently japan-o-corps wont make any changes where as others might Evo seams a candidate for such.

Ninja'd

Does anyone else immediately think of the problems with child soldiers here? If your Orc buddy is getting drafted by some warlord, why not take you along too? In real life you get child soldiers who just prior to battle get a cut on the chest that is subsequently filled with cocaine and sewn back up. They start going crazy and get pointed in the direction of the other group of coked-up children and the killing starts. Orcs might turn into a cultivated race where you can start harvesting them at 5 or so for suicide combat duty.

Do Orc force-grown wimps grow in 4 weeks then?

Yea, my last post was a downer and a bit of a thread-jack. Sorry about that. Back to life cycles of Orcs, how does their age and professional sports work? I imagine your Orcs would be taking over any league that allowed them, but would they let a 12 year old play in college leagues?

Likely. Also Orks are the choice race for any clone army. With VR teaching and training and a 12-14 year set up time. Plus if all cloned and raised in identical environments say hello to delta suites en-mass same with bio and gene-modification wouldn't be hard either. Though this is a whole other topic.

As for child soldiers I don't think it will change much the warlords that will use them still will. Those that don't won't. Orks just give a much bigger and tougher army.

As for a cultivaied race I doubt it will get to that golbaly but is some areas having hordes of Orks would be a help. Though I don't see Orks just being treated as foder even in the clone army situation.

You can see why Orks have been discriminated though. One they are in some peoples eyes a real threat to human dominence of the world the other metas are rare Orks aren't. They are physicaly superior to humans. They also share very bestial trates birthing litters and tusks.

Hardly a thread jack more a tangent form the main conversation.

As for that I think theres a real issue there Orks either have to be treated as 33% older OR they will cause HUGE issues on levels beyond voteing and drinking. If they where in normal education not only would it be a massive demotorvator being taught shit you found out for your self or being taught things well below your intellectual level. An Ork in pre-shcool would be talking in full complex sentences and such this would not only distance hem form their peers and but also make them suffer from a raceal form of pick on the smart kid. While Orks are statistically below average intelligence (racial max of 5) this would very rarely come in to play in every day life.

As they meture 33% faster in every way as far as we can tell. Bar a few things with mental development that are to do with time spent existing. Orks will not fit in to a normal society where all the other meta-types develop at the same rate.

Given how racial modifiers have traditionally stacked the deck against Orks, mentally, and for them physically, I don't see a lot of Orks getting stuffed into lockers by the Human and Elf students for being "the smart kid."

Physical abuse maybe not but I can see it causing issues. If they are all in the same class at the same age. The Ork will clump togther and well beat the jack out of the other and outsmart them. The only kids at that age even on par abit would be troll children while meturing at the same speed as humans they would be bigger and likely stronger than the orks.

Also, IIRC, Runner's Companion has a report of the UN saying that after a big expansion of Ork population, their "litters" droped down quite a bit, with mommy Orks having 1, 2 kids at a time.

Still hard to pin solidly as a random effect or as a long term one.

There are effects on reproduction rate that are population-density dependent [link]

That implies that birth numbers of orks have only dropped in the cities. Give that data collection in baranes and other isolated areas is likely impeaded if not just made up. Then Orks are still capable of litters of 4+. And its not some crazy ass magic(re-con).

It could also be that due to discrimination, Orcs are more likely to avoid the census or to lie. Dataset quality is not to be ignored.

No it is not. Espesaily in SR where shadow talk and corprate data is wirten with error in.

Combining the two points, it could be that the orks that are giving reliable census data are the ones working for the corps, and they have fewer kids 'cause they're richer.

That is an excellent point.

One thing that's always bothered me about the fantasy genre is that they assume all races have maturity rates based squarely upon their maximum age. The longer you live, apparently, the longer it takes your balls to drop... and vice-versa.

That said, I'm pretty sure there's something official out there that lists this kind of information for all the base metatypes. I'll be damned if I can remember which book it was (I'd say something in the 2nd edition line of books), but after thumbing through a few that I have close at hand, I couldn't find anything. Try looking in books like Shadowbeat or the Sprawl Survival Guide. Those, as well as the core rulebooks describing each race, are the ones most likely to have the information.

Here is the quote from the book, it is supposed to be a report for the UN's International Comitee on Human Rights. If it really was just a bunch of corp Orks with acces to birth control programs, I don't think they would say that what has caused the drop would inconclusive.

However it could be some strange (semi-magical) population density issue to stop the Ork race from starving it's self to death.



How ever Orks do mature 33% faster. The other races don't have any significant changes in development times. I'm sure there's some but nothing close to sociologically massive. Life spans how ever are an interesting thing to conciser along with maturity. Also who's to say that orks won't live well past 45. I mean the SR average life expectancy for a human is 65 where as in some areas of the SR world where 90+ could well be the average now with medical advances and let alone age counting gene-treatments is that going to lead to screwy data come a few decades.

Or an elven plot to remove the race from the face of the earth.....

Also, I remember either a novel or sourcebook mentioning that they mature mentally at the same rate, saying that they have a full grown mature, muscled body while still going through teen angst and all the social problems teens go through (I think it also mentions thats why gangs try to recruit them so heavily)

The elves, immortal or not, highborn or not, would never enact a plot to erase orks from the earth. It's ridiculous and don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

The elves will need servitors once they ascend to rule the Earth, after all.

Novels are horrifically off cannon at time. One has a human goblinise in to a dwarf... So forgive me for not trusting the novels on this topic.

.....Ugh. What?

Shadowboxer, yeah. Not the worst novel out there, but certainly not the best.

Mmm. I had heard, somewhere, that that one was considered non-canon by folks. That must be (one reason) why.

Definitely "one" reason, yes. There was also the magic smart-holster/belt-buckle that quick drew for you, right off the top of my head. Other sins against nature, too, I'm sure...but those always struck me as the top two.

I've never considered any of the fiction to be canonical. Including the stuff in the actual sourcebooks. At best, they're treated as simflicks and pulp action novels in my take on the game world... and that's about it.

The assumption in this thread seems to be that because Orks mature faster physically, they mature faster mentally as well.

Instead, imagine a 12-year-old tween with the body of a professional athlete, the hormones of a horny teen, and the education of a slum kid.

That's how I prefer it for the most part. Same goes for elves and other long-lived races. In D&D, they don't hit adulthood until they're like 100 years old. It's goofy.

Good point, I'm more likely to lean towards that representation.

...because descriptions like "Orks have a very hard time fitting into a society that wasn’t designed to accommodate them. They mature faster, live shorter, and have families that are dramatically larger than
human families. For them, the government system is broken. They can’t take a job, drive a car, buy a drink, or even get married for years after they mature." (RC, the entry for the ork activist contact) don't sound like orks just matured faster psysically

I would assume that the natural stuff (acknowledging you need to poop, putting together the fact that you can hurt someone else and beginning to communicate coherently) might come faster for an Ork, while more complex things (spelling? math?) wouldn't necessarily be any faster. If subjected to schooling at the same rate as humans, I imagine the result would be worse (assuming accelerated physical maturity) because the hormonal distractions of a High School Freshman might manifest in like 5th grade or something. While all the kids are great at kickball, little Johnny two-tusks sure can kick the hell out of a ball, but he always trips on his own feet halfway to first base, and his spelling is atrocious, probably because he never quite got a grip on phonics.

And he'd sit in class drawing dirty doodles of his teacher because he can't stop thinking about her and the way he feels funny when she talks to him.

And the winner is this....

And hit puberty at 25. Have have atrociously low birthrate and seam to like running around on pointless adventures.