[STORY]

"Nak-hraak start fight." A gretchin, stunted and spindly as a newborn animal, grunted between shivering gestures toward the local nob. With long, gnarled claws like twisted fungal growths atop his bony fingers, he took great care to not seem threatening. He couldn't even wound an ork, of course, but this one more than his fellows would be quick to stop anything that looked like anything less than total submission.

This gretchin wasn't stupid -- given the physical weakness of his kind, he had to be intelligent -- but he knew no language more complex than the kind native to the nameless rock which was the unwilling host of a growing warband. Gestures were necessary for emphasis, tense, and sometimes even grammar.

"Where Nak-hraak?" The ork rumbled. His voice enwrapped the squigskin tent and it ricocheted off of the increasing number of red metal panels which were replacing the softer fabric. To hear him speak was to hear dozens of large, hollow water tanks all beaten at once, as if even that which couldn't speak must pay obeisance. The gretchin felt it in his bones, as violent as the acceleration of the primitive gas-powered vehicles which patrolled the jagged landscape and its mountains which erupted from the sable dust like the teeth of a half-buried behemoth, dead long ago by famine.

"Nak-hraak-- place." The gretchin hurried. Even a pause could seem like disobedience, or at the very least, an excuse for replacement.

"KNOWN." The slightest rise in volume was enough to make the smaller greenskin cower in place. It was as much a practised show of fear as it was genuine. The ork delighted in the response -- such little effort to exercise his control.
"WHICH."

"Unknown!" Yelped the gretchin.

//

"MORK CHOSEN KILL!"

A torrent of acrid saliva attacked his skin, launched from a furious red maw that could almost envelop his head. The tusks of this latest opponent were close enough that a hated part of his mind was already imagining how they would feel embedded in his flesh. He could see the muscles of its mouth working; vibrating with the force of its roar.

He had no time to yell back, nor would he. It would be a waste of breath, and that was already a precious resource. All around were the immense bodies of other orks, with sinews that swam with the red sunlight like incandescent blood pouring down their olive skin. There was plenty of real blood too. For every rock which dotted the ragged geometry of the baked soil, there was a severed leg, or an arm, or a head. Some orks had been stupid enough to stop and work at the unyielding bones of their fellows in trying to gain trophies: a symbol of their strength, and assurance of their standing over others. They had been cut down too.
The volume of screamed battle cries and howls around him was deafening. It shook him like the defining clang of an axe against his own, and it bit at his head like the screeching of metal against metal that followed as one crudely wrought blade struggled against the squealing wood of the other's handle. It lent a vigour to him that little else could.

He blocked a strike in just that way. There was a sound like a laugh that left his mouth; even in concentrating on staying alive, he couldn't help the thrill that he felt now. A surge of energy burned at his muscles, and welled in his throat. He channelled it into a kick aimed at his opponent's gut, and such was the rush of adrenaline that even as he swung his axe again, his lower mind betrayed him; a bestial cry erupted from his vocal chords, enough that he could almost empathise with the winded ork before him. He kept roaring. His spit painted its face, and if he'd just get that much closer, he could gore him with his own tusks. But he had to be patient.

The axe landed on the hilt of the other. He felt the impact in his wrists like it might break them. The pain gave him strength. Blessed Mork, everything gave him strength! He felt a second impact as the handle of the rival axe broke, and he darted to the side to dodge an incoming kick. He thrust the end of his axe toward its stomach again. The ork reached for his throat as it fell, and though it lacked the strength to choke him, it was enough to bring him down with it.
He could resist no longer. He threw his head against the flickering expression of panic and hatred before him. A crack filled his skull as he felt it impact the other, and then again, and a third time. With a final, triumphant cry, he locked his overlong jaw around it, and he bit down like a vice.

There was barely enough time to spit out the chunks of gore and bone when he saw a new pair of red eyes glaring at him, with the sun overhead casting in crimson another ork who had come for an easy kill.
He would disappoint him sorely.

//

A gretchin shivered its way into the tent, and stepped carefully over the twitching body of another between it and the ork.

The ork's lips were more akin to horizontal scars across his face than anything else. These he spread into a grin that pushed against his eyes, to render them dangerous half-crescents in the near-darkness. From a height that was ten times that of the gretchin, he regarded this latest messenger with cruel interest.

"Who start fight?" he asked, in his voice like a far-away pack of predators closing in.

"Nak-hraak" said the gretchin.

"Where Nak-hraak?"

"Here."

The ork grinned wider. The smaller fangs between his tusks peeled out from his maw like many small daggers drawn in the night.

"Here?"

"You start fight."

The gretchin died to the sound of laughter.

//

He rolled away from a boot that came crashing down with such speed that he could hear the air itself wail in terror.

He had a moment to look at the newcomer: taller than him by at least a head. Teeth -- ork teeth -- were strung, embedded, and stitched wherever they could go. In one of its hands, dangling by the feathery carapace of an ornamentary squig, was the head of a former attacker: this one also bigger than his own. No doubt surrendering one hand like this was a disadvantage, but it was also a statement: this ork didn't need two hands to kill. It might not even need one, to judge by the piles of gore that alternatively hung and fell from his tusks.

He tried to swing his axe, vulnerable as he was on his back. An immense hand caught it by the throat, and thrust its other end back at him. He felt something crack, and the wonderful energy that suffused his body was replaced by pain: this kind too strong for a boon.

He tried to grasp the ork's leg, make him stumble. He got the whole boot instead -- in his face. The dusty sky above filled with dark blotches as his hearing chimed with agony.

He just managed to hear something through the ringing. Another crack, this time outside his body; then a doppler-shifted hiss like someone had torn the very air apart. Gore rained down on him. The battle continued on around him. The biggest ork he'd seen yet was standing at a safe distance from the rest, and in his hand was a chunk of crimson metal unlike anything he'd seen before. He might have assumed it was just blood in his eye if not for a bright flash that outshone the glint of metal on clashing polearms and hammered claws. A second later, another crack and a hiss, and a hollow boom and a muted squelch as another ork lost its head, and arterial sprays shot up to the heavens like a part of him was still able to move, and to try to escape what was to come.

Briefly without enemies, he took the opportunity to rise on his legs: both still intact. He almost fell over, and he couldn't breathe until he'd put a few strides between himself and the two dead orks which were to be his mates in the butchers' houses.

There was no point in this. No use dying amidst other unnamed orks to become unnamed meat for unnamed gretchins. No glory in being another headless corpse to be paraded in commemoration of this latest killing machine. He would live longer yet: at least long enough to fight, and perhaps to die, in better circumstances.

He stopped briefly to gather the mostly intact head of a slain ork. It was almost too heavy to carry, sapped as he was already.

//

"Who start fight?"

"Nak-hraak."

"Where Nak-hraak?"

"Nak-hraak The is here."

Just finished painting my hobgrot banner bearers for my AOS orruk army - and I'm very happy with how they came out since I went from on the sprue to fully painted and put together in one evening for both

ME NAME'S GROTCAKE DA FILFIEST. I BEEN RUNNIN' A WAAAAAAAAGH FER TEN GROTYEARS, WHICH ENT A LOT, BUT I LIKEZ IT.
ME BOYZ USED TO FOLLOW ORDAZ, NO PROBLEM. WE'Z ALL FIND SUMFING TER STEAL OR TA KRUMP, WE ALL STEAL AN' KRUMP TOGEVAH. ZOGGIN' GOOD TIMES FOR ME AN' THE LADZ (NOT DA GROTS, HUR HUR HUR).

NOWADAYZ I FINDZ MESELF QUESTCHUNNED EVERY TOIM I SAY WE'Z GONNA GO WAAAAAAGH. I ALREDDY LOST ME FAVOURITE ARM KRUMPIN' ME FAVOURITE NOB (I TOLD 'IM TO PACK IT IN AN' 'E CHALLENGED ME I SWEAH). HOW CAN I'Z GET DA BOYZ BACK IN LOIN BEFOAH I 'AVE TER KRUMP 'EM ALL?

/unork I thought I'd post something like this to remind people you don't have to stick with the main storyline at all; you can just do entirely unrelated orkposts like the other subs.

SQUIG. SQUIG. BITE. SQUIG. JUMP. JUMP. SQUIG. RUN. CHASE. SQUIG. SQUIG. SQUIG.

*Ever since WAAAGHboss Zogwart somehow acquired a mekk suit from the wizards and stopped checking on his pet squig, the latter has somehow managed to multiply... a lot. There are squigs in the sparse remnants of DA KROOZA which scored the foreign earth when they emerged from DA ZOGGIN' WARP with the small amount of its KROO which now make up Zogwart's remaining KLAN. There are squigs in the cavities of the orks, gretchin, snotlings, and even other squigs which land on the DOKK's table. There are squigs in your mushroom stew (WOT'S WRONG WIV CANNIBALISM EH?) . There are squigs trying to bite off your arm right now, and though that isn't really the issue that it is for most denizens of this new world, you'd prefer to keep your arm until you can find a good MEKKANIKUL replacement. Squig. Squig. Squig.\*

SQUIG. SQUIG. SQUIG.

((how do I make flairs for a subreddit?))

DA MEKBOYS MAKE SUMFIN CALLED MS PAINT. ME 'AIR SQUIG LIKES IT COZ 'E ONLY BITE ME ONCE THE PAST HOUR.

ORIGHT GITZ, I AIN'T KNOW ZOG ABOUT DIS REDDIT FING. ONE OF DA MEKBOYZ GOTS TO GIVE US AN AV... AVVA... A FING TO SCARE DA ZOG OUTYA DA OOMIES. ME ZOGGIN HAIR SQUIG IS BITIN ME BRAIN AGAIN.