生物贤者锐评蘑菇和人类帝国

本文原文出自MIKE BROOKS所著的WARBOSS

原文及其一切权力归属Games Workshop所有，本人翻译仅供学习交流，不用作商业用途。

正文如下：

The orkish mind is something that many of my esteemed colleagues will argue barely exists. They will maintain that the orks and their kin are little more than instinctive animals, carrying out the tasks and functions in which they have evolved to specialise without independent thought, somewhat in the manner of colonial insects. In this matter – as in so many others – it is in fact the magi biologis in question who are acting mindlessly.
兽人思维是我的许多德高望重的同僚会争论其并不存在的东西。他们会继续宣称这样的说法：兽人和它们的族裔不过是靠本能行动的动物，执行它们进化所特化的任务并发挥作用，没有独立思考，在某种程度上如同昆虫一样。对此——就像很多其他事物一样——事实上生物贤者才是无脑的那个。
Orkish society is considerably more dynamic than our own; my learned peers might deride it as chaotic, if they deigned to accept the truth of such a statement, but even that would indicate limited understanding on their parts.[1] The simple truth is that an ork is far more capable than an unaugmented human of recognising when a situation is not to their individual benefit and taking action to remedy that fact.
兽人社会比我们的还要有活力地多；我博学的同僚可能会将其视为混乱无序，仿佛他们已经屈膝于此等陈述的说法，但是这只是表面了他们对自己所钻研的学科缺乏了解。一个简单的事实就是一个兽人比起未经改造的人要更能认清情况是否对它们的个人利益有利，并且会采取行动来修正现实。
It might be argued that this cannot be true, since orks will readily throw themselves into perilous situations with little regard for their own safety, or indeed, in a combat situation, tactics. The key issue here is that this is a highly desirable state of affairs for an ork, for whom the outcome of a battle is of substantially less importance than experiencing said battle in the first place. However, should an ork ‘boss’, ‘big boss’ or ‘warboss’ (the closest translations of their very loose command structure) not provide their followers with an appropriate level of excitement, combat or plunder – in other words, the things their followers desire – they can expect an attempted coup from within the ranks of those followers. This is a universally observed truth, wherever it has been possible to study the behaviour of orks with any degree of accuracy over a period of time.
这种说法可能会被争论，称其并非真实，因为兽人会乐意将它们置于险境之中而不去关心它们自己的安全，或者说，在战斗中，不去关心战术。这里的关键问题在于，这对于兽人而言是一个求之若渴的情形，对它们而言，战斗的结果远没有体验战斗的过程重要。但是，一个兽人“头目”“大头目”或者“战争头目”（对于它们松散组织最为接近的翻译）并不为它们的追随者提供恰当的兴奋，战斗，或者战利品——换句话来说，那些它们的追随者想要的东西——它们会在不同阶层的追随者中策划一场政变。这是广为人知的真相，不论在何处，都有可能发现兽人的行为在一段时间中体现了任何程度的精确性。
If one compares this with the behaviour of, for example, the massed ranks of the Astra Militarum, for whom combat or even the potential of combat will provoke extremely negative physiological reactions, the difference is startling. Notions such as ‘duty’ might hold them to an undesirable course of action with poor outcomes; so too might fear of lethal censure by an officer such as an Imperial commissar, despite the fact that, should they act as a unit – as they have been trained to – the troopers could easily overpower and kill any such officer. The unaugmented human, enslaved to the whirl of emotions in their brain, is far more likely to go against their own wishes and interests rather than disobey a figure of authority.
如果有人比较了这种行为，比如说，星界军的巨量阶级，对他们而言战斗，甚至仅仅是被卷入战斗的可能性都会造成极端负面的生理反应，这种差异骇人听闻。如同“职责”这样的概念可能会迫使他们采取不想要的行动并得出可悲的结果；也可能是畏惧来自如同帝国政委这样的军官带来的致命惩戒，忽略这个事实，他们应该如同一个单元一样行动——就像他们所受训的那样——这些步兵可以轻易压倒并杀死这样的军官。未经改造的人类，被他们大脑中纠缠着的情绪所奴役着，更加可能去违背自己的意愿和利益而不是反抗权威。
For orks, that position would be unthinkable. So far as this xenos species appears to be concerned, although senior orks are larger than their subordinates, no ork – no matter how large – could maintain authority over its fellows without providing them with what they want. Indeed, since orks gain in size the more they fight, being a large ork indicates that you fight regularly, and therefore following you is likely to bring any other ork into combat.
It would be an interesting state of affairs indeed if unaugmented humans were to show the clear, logical reasoning possessed by orks, and act on it accordingly…
– Extract from the works of Magos Kazadin Yallamagasa,
later known as the Biologis Diabolicus, declared heretek in M38
对兽人来说，这种局面是不可想象的。这种异形种族目前表现得很担心，即便高级兽人比他们的下级要更加庞大，没有兽人——不论其有多大——可以在不为下属提供它们想要的东西的情况下维持自己的权威。当然，既然兽人战得越多就越大只，变成一只庞大的兽人就意味着你经常去战，因此追随你就有可能将其它兽人卷入战斗之中。
那可真是有趣的一幕啊，如果未经改造的人类可以展现出兽人这样如此清晰的逻辑考量，并且以此来行动…
- 选自卡扎丁-雅拉玛伽撒贤者的作品，其人已经被辨别为生物恶贤，于M38被认定为异务派。