Old Zogwort

Old Zogwort is an Ork Weirdboy of notorious psychic power, cited by fellow Weirdboyz as a benchmark of survival. Among the Orks, Weirdboyz channel the psychic energy generated by the massed will of their kind, and Zogwort’s name recurs wherever that power runs closest to uncontrolled discharge. He is reckoned among the Snakebites klan in temperament if not always in codex placement, his affinity for serpents and squigs marking him as a figure the Snakebites tradition claims as one of its own.

Accounts place his origin on the feral world of Zurk, where he is said to have been born during a total eclipse, an omen Orks read as Mork’s mark. His spore — the seed-form from which an Ork develops — matured unusually, lodged in a nest of bloodvipers, and rather than perish he bit the snakes in return; Ork lore holds that snakes have declined to bite him ever since. Earlier codices placed his birth on the jungle world of Catachan rather than Zurk, a discrepancy later publications resolved in Zurk’s favour, and the disagreement is preserved here rather than smoothed over.

His reputation rests on deeds as much as origin. A psychic blast attributed to him destroyed an entire Imperial Guard company, at the cost of one of his own eyes, and Zogwort maintains that Mork himself aimed the discharge. He is credited with the power to turn enemies into squigs, the fungoid beasts Orks breed and eat, and he keeps a retinue of snake-squigs as personal pets, a detail that binds his signature animal motif to his psychic craft. These are the stories other Weirdboyz repeat when measuring their own control against his.

Zogwort served under Warboss Skabgutz before departing once that Warboss’s warband grew too small to match his growing standing, an interaction that marks the one named master-and-subordinate relationship in his record. He is remembered as the architect of Da Weirdwaaagh!, an Ork campaign whose object, unusually among Waaagh!s, was to seize and distribute snakes across the wider galaxy rather than simple conquest. No later defeat or death is recorded of him: Old Zogwort is treated as active in the present era, his name still invoked wherever Weirdboyz gather to gauge the outer limits of psychic survival.