Fungus Friday - Fun-gas

So how do the orks fuel their vehicles?  Are they fueled by a squig running around on a hamster wheel?  (Probably true in the case of Snakebite Tribes…)  Or are they a mad concoction that has been processed by a careful conglomerate of squig oil, fungus, and patience on the part of the Mek who is responsible for such a feat. 

The background doesn’t really mention fuel too much.  (I have yet to read Gorkamorka all the way…)  But what it does mention is a mixture of fungus fuel.  I can only imagine that the process for fungus and squig oil refinery is similar to everything else in the “civilized” ork world; loud, dangerous, and a bit silly.  In other words, over the top.  Below, I have written my own ideas about this process.  (Don’t judge too harshly, I only have a cursory knowledge of the refining process of true gasoline.)

To speculate how it works, the ork mek who has an intimate knowledge of machinery or “stuff wot werks in dat fing dere” has almost a instinctive intuition on how a combustible engine works.  Studying “borrowed” Imperial engines, the mek knows what exactly the engine needs to run, but more importantly, knows how to modify it to “make it werk proppa” (which is another article in itself)  The mek “analyzes” the Imperial fuel, and through observation and trial runs, (usually involving lots of damage to the engine, and gretchin having carbon blowing into their small, weedy faces turning them black with soot and debris.)  After re-building some of the parts needed to “make it proppa” (i.e. louder and faster) the mek will carefully start the process of applying his own “speshul brand o’ fuel” to the engine, followed by more testing.  Of course, the entire process thus far only takes about 15 minutes, before the engine must be re-built from scratch as is often the case when it can’t handle the “Speshul mix”.  That however, is only one half of the equation.

 So, how does this fuel work?  Same as any other fuel.

How then does the fuel become orky?  Does the mek start with a base of Imperial fuel, and add things to it?  No, more times than not, the mek will toss it out and start from scratch. 

Through capturing Imperial refineries, the ork meks have tweeked the processing center to handle all sorts of mixes of fungus and squig oil, producing a volatile, super-charged, fuel.  Each Mek has his own idea how the components must be mixed to achieve the ideal results. 

The ingredients are the same no matter what type of fuel the mek is attempting to make.  These are

1.) Squig oil.  Gretchin oilers who capture oil squigs and keep them in large herds near the refineries, squirt the oil from the squigs into the vat for processing.  The oil is then heated, and the vapors then cooled to make a “diesel” type fuel, most humans would be content to leave it there, but for the ork, it needs to be “bettah”.  The condensation left from the vapors cooling is added with the other ingredients.

2.) Fungus.  Different Meks have different ideas on what a.) what type of fungus should be used for fuel, and b.) how much.  Some Meks utilize rarer fungus, producing a higher octane fuel, that burns quickly, and performs great (which is what most bosses want.) however, it runs out a whole lot quicker, and even though the Mek is loathe to do so, he typically won’t utilize this type fuel with the exceptions of urgency (i.e. “da boss bashin’ him on da ‘ead” or the Speed Freek orks, who utilize this mixture to its full potential.  (Not to mention that the Speed Freeks have their own brand of fuel.) It would be rather embarrassing and frustrating to the orks to run out of gas in the heat of battle.

3.) Fungus Brew.  A lot of Meks have taken to using the strongest Fungus Brew they can get, and adding it in.  Most of the time this produces both high performance, and efficiency in the vehicle in question.  Occasionally, a lower quality fungus brew is dumped in with variable results.  (This in part, is why we have the “ramshackle” rule.)

So, there it is.  We have fossil fuel, orks have fungus fuel.  Which makes the vehicle run, but we all know it is really the red paint job that makes it zip along, the fuel just makes the engine run.  Meks believe this just as much as any other ork, but they also know that when you put a super-charged engine, high octane fuel and a red paint job together, “dere’s nuffin fasta, not even one of dem squishy panzee flyin’ wotzitz.” 

So, what do you think?  Do you think it is the ork fuel that allows the vehicle to go faster, or because the orks believe that the red paint job works, it does.  Do you think that the meks sell fuel to the mobs who use trukks? (Those mobs have to buy their trukks from the meks, so I would imagine so.)  Perhaps the Mek that sells them a trukk, also tells them to buy fuel from him. 

Now I am inspired to build an orky service station with fungus fuel gas pumps, and little grots running around in service station gear…I am sure it’s been done, but it would be cool addition to my orky city…