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At a glance
The Grox is the most important animal in the Imperium of Man. It is a large, heavy, reptilian creature that can grow up to five metres long, with a thick hide, a powerful body and a famously vicious temper. Grox can eat almost anything, including soil and rock, and they can survive in conditions that would kill most livestock. These traits have made them the staple meat animal of the Imperium. Across a million worlds, Grox are raised for meat, hide and labour, and countless Imperial citizens and soldiers live on rations made from Grox.
There is a catch. The Grox is extraordinarily aggressive. Left to its own devices, a Grox will attack anything that moves, including its keepers, and it is perfectly capable of killing them. The Imperium's solution is brutal and practical: most Grox are lobotomised soon after hatching. A lobotomised Grox is docile, heavy and slow, and ideal for herding. An intact Grox is a monster.
Origins
Grox originate in the Solomon system. From there, they have spread across the galaxy alongside humanity. No one knows exactly when the Imperium began farming them, but they are now so widespread that most Imperial citizens have never seen a world without them. They have been bred and transported to agri-worlds, hive worlds, feudal worlds and frontier colonies.
The Grox's ability to digest soil and rock makes it uniquely useful. It can graze on barren land where no other livestock could survive, and it can be raised on worlds where crops are scarce. This versatility is one of the reasons the Imperium has been able to feed its vast population.
Anatomy & temperament
A Grox is a reptile with a long, heavy body, a thick scaly hide and a broad, blunt head. It lays eggs. Its jaws are strong enough to crush bone, and its claws can tear through a man. A mature Grox is massive, slow when calm and terrifyingly fast when enraged. Grox are known to cannibalise their wounded, and herds will turn on a weak or injured member and devour it.
The Grox's temperament is the key to everything about how the Imperium handles it. It is aggressive by nature, and it does not tame easily. It attacks other animals, it attacks people and it attacks other Grox. The only reliable way to make it safe is to remove the part of its brain that drives its aggression.
Farming the Grox
Lobotomisation
Shortly after hatching, Grox are taken to be lobotomised. A hole is drilled through the left lobe of the brain, removing the aggression centre. The resulting animals, known as lobo-grox, are calm, slow and docile. They can be herded in large numbers, and they grow fat on whatever they are fed. Most Grox in the Imperium are lobo-grox.
Breeders
Not every Grox can be lobotomised. Breeding animals must keep their instincts intact, so breeders are left whole. They are controlled with electro-prods and implants, and handling them is one of the most dangerous jobs on any agri-world. If the controls fail, breeders can revert to full savagery. These are known as psycho-grox, and they are among the most feared animals on many worlds.
Herders
The men who manage Grox are known as grox-prodders, and their life expectancy is said to be short. They spend their lives among animals that could kill them, using prods to keep the beasts in line. Some herds are guarded by specially trained animals known as laser-grox, fitted with weapons to protect the herds from predators. The details vary from world to world, but the danger does not.
Uses of the Grox
- Meat: Grox meat feeds billions. It is processed into rations, ration bars, protein paste and the infamous corpse-starch of the poorest worlds.
- Leather: Grox hide is tough and used for clothing, armour and equipment.
- Labour: lobotomised Grox pull wagons, ploughs and carts on primitive worlds.
- Trade: Grox are traded between worlds, and entire agri-worlds are devoted to raising them.
Soldiers of the Astra Militarum are among the biggest consumers of Grox. Their rations, often mocked as tasteless, are frequently made from Grox meat. Ciaphas Cain compared Ambull meat to Grox in his memoirs, and Imperial Guardsmen everywhere know its taste only too well.
Feeding a galaxy
The scale of Grox farming is hard to imagine. A single hive world can house billions of people who grow none of their own food, and those billions must be fed by agri-worlds that may be light years away. Grox are central to that system. They are raised in vast herds on agri-worlds, slaughtered and processed in enormous meat-works, and shipped as frozen carcasses, salted meat, protein blocks and paste. Imperial Navy bulk freighters carry Grox products along trade routes that span entire sectors, and a disruption to those shipments can starve a hive within weeks.
The Grox's hardiness is what makes this possible. It survives rough handling, crowded transport and poor food. It breeds steadily. It can be raised on worlds with thin soil and harsh weather, because it will happily eat the soil itself. Where other livestock would fail, the Grox endures, and the Imperium has built its food supply around that endurance.
On the hive worlds
Most hive dwellers never see a living Grox. They know it only as a flavour, or the lack of one, in their daily rations. On worlds such as Necromunda, Grox products are traded down through the levels of the hive, from the relatively fresh meat eaten by the nobility to the reconstituted slop of the underhive. For the poorest, even grox paste can be a luxury, and something cheaper and less pleasant takes its place.
The Grox in Imperial culture
The Grox is so common that it has become part of Imperial speech. A slow, stupid person may be called a grox. A man who does not care about something might say he does not give a grox's hind end for it. Soldiers grumble about grox rations and dream of real food.
On feral worlds, Grox are sometimes treated with respect. Some tribes ritually hunt wild Grox and eat their hearts to take their strength. Wild Grox are dangerous prey, and such hunts are rites of passage. On the world of Ikaneos-Alpha, a smaller feral form of Grox roams wild.
Handling Grox
- Keep prods charged; breeders turn the moment control fails.
- Separate the wounded at once, before the herd turns cannibal.
- Never turn your back on an unaltered Grox.
- Check implants after every power fluctuation.
- Respect wild Grox; feral herds have not forgotten how to kill.
Trivia
- Grox originate in the Solomon system.
- Most are lobotomised as hatchlings by drilling through the left lobe of the brain.
- Psycho-grox are breeders whose control has failed.
- Grox can eat soil and rock.
- The Grox is so common in Imperial life that it has become a byword for stupidity and stubbornness.
- Breeders must keep their full brains, which makes them both the most valuable and the most dangerous Grox on any farm.
- Grox lay eggs, and the hatchlings are drilled within days of emerging.
