The audio drama Ogryn Story tells the humble tale of one of Warhammer 40k’s enormous, simple, honest, trusting space ogres, who loves his mum, his Emperor and his commander Elise, from his own perspective and in his own voice. The audio drama is a recent collaboration between the YouTuber Warrior Tier, musician @decreaser and fan author @Lost_Scribbler, and has already racked up 337,000 views on YouTube.
New fans may know Ogryns from Warhammer 40k Darktide, where their huge physique lets them wield some of the best Warhammer 40k Darktide weapons. However, it’s the Ogryn’s childlike understanding of the grim darkness of the far future that motivated Warrior Tier (who asked to be known by his YouTube handle) and his collaborators to create a drama from an Ogryn’s perspective. He says they wanted “to tell a story set in the 40k universe, told by a lovable character who has to live in such a brutal time.”
Warrior Tier had concerns about the reception for the story, and almost buried the audio. “I thought fans would hate it and would only want grimdark stories on the channel”, he says. But it’s already far and away the channel’s most popular video, despite only being published on November 20. He says that fans appreciate the pathos and tenderness of the story, adding: “We are getting a lot of comments seeing the comparison of the Ogryn to ‘Forrest Gump’, but we were really going for more of a ‘Mice and Men’ feel to it”.
Warrior Tier lives in “the realm of Chaos… Florida”. He started creating audio dramas in April 2022, inspired by a love for the medium and being told he had “a unique voice.” Although he worked alone for the first few months, he soon brought on his friend @decreaser to create music. @Lost_Scribbler found the pair via their TikTok account, scripting the video ‘First War of Armageddon – Dreadnought Story’ and each story since then.
If you fancy trying your hand recording audio dramas, Warrior Tier says “a Blue Yeti mic and a closet are all you need to get into audio recording”. He’s positive about the experience of creating dramas for the Warhammer 40k community, saying “I can say with absolute sincerity, it’s been the most fun I have ever had!” You may even encounter his Ogryn in the wild if you’re a Darktide player: “Whenever I play, I try to do the Ogryn voice on game chat”.
Ogryns are a divergent ‘abhuman’ species in the 41st millennium, descendents of interplanetary settlers who developed a huge, ogre-like stature at the expense of their intellect. Ogryn’s appeared in the game’s first edition, Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader, and are very much a product of its origins as a science-fictional transposition of the fantasy tropes found in Warhammer: The Old World. They’re fanatically loyal, whether they’re part of the Imperium of Man, serving in the Astra Militarum, or pledged to one of the many Chaos-aligned Warhammer 40k factions.
Many Warhammer 40k books are available as audio-dramas from the Black Library. If you think you have what it takes to become the next 40k novelist, Black Library writing submissions are open right now.