#just a societal thing fer me to chew on

[gemwolfz]

keronian technology is leaps and bounds above our own. which is why keronian tamagotchis have always been rechargable ever since their first release

[xenosgirlvents]

“Fantum maskz! Git ya’ Fantum maskz! Fer da low, low price a’ all da teef in ya gob, you’ze can look jus’ like Warboss Fantum! Jus’ way, way runtier,” a greenskin merchant bellowed, his calls largely drowned out by the countless other merchants jostling to sell their own wares. The Buhzarr, as the Operorks referred to their main marketplace, was extremely busy today, as well it should have been. The Fantum, warboss of the Operork clan and leader of the growing WAAAAGH! Bignoyz, had finally announced that the WAAAAGH! was ready to take off in search of a “Roight gud foight” and new war stories to sing about. As such, the merchants of the highly organized – by Ork standards, at least – primary warclan were capitalizing on the excitement. Lots of excitement meant lots of loose teef, and lots of loose teef meant lots of greenskins looking to spend said teef.

One greenskin in particular watched the clamoring mob with a smile of amusement from on top of a flimsy “apartment” complex, chewing on some dried meat held in her one good hand. La’al had spent an entire year trapped on this planet, and she had adapted fairly well once things had… well, things involving Orks never really calmed down, but they mellowed slightly. Having painted her limbs and skin green, even with her “roight Orky” helmet she still shouldn’t have passed well as a greenskin. She was much shorter and more slender than proper Orks, while also being much taller and well-built than the gretchin populace of The Stayj – the name the greenskins had given to the planet during their stay. But apparently being able to best most Orks who gave her trouble through hand-to-hand combat was all the bhe’ghaal needed to accept “Lildeff” as one of their own.

It had not been a particularly easy year of her life, as the number of new scars crisscrossing her biological components could clearly show, but she was doing much better than she had ever expected she could. Finishing off her meal, she clamped the jaws/visor of her helmet shut again and dropped down a few stories, walking along atop the various merchant awnings a few yards above the densely packed streets of the Buhzarr. Whenever one of the Orks below noticed Lildeff’s unique silhouette and made a gesture or call up to her, she would respond in kind, either waving the new, much more well-made blade she had recently welded to her left arm or replying in Ork tongues, either true Orkish or their human dialect. If she had been Por’faan the bhe’ghaal’s relative camaraderie would likely have made her entire life worthwhile. She had somehow managed to live alongside the antithesis of the Tau’va. And all it had really taken was some strategic displays of force, and occasionally proving that said displays were more than luck.

After a few hours of relatively aimless wandering, occasionally knocking the teef out of a particularly rowdy greenskin to trade for her regular supplies, the prices of which had been dramatically marked up with how many teef were flowing lately, she found herself at the edge of town opposite where she had made her “home,” more a very heavily booby-trapped cave just beyond the outskirts of the shanty-city, and looked upon the fleet, an odd sense of awe in her at the sight. There were more than fifty Mega-Gargants of various size and design parked out in the badlands – and towering above all of them was the Perish Operork Fort, the Fantum’s personal command center. Even to La’al’s T’au sensibilities it was utterly breathtaking. The Perish was so unbelievable in its scale that even the spires of the Imperator titan whose deployment on Dal’yth she had seen recordings of would have barely reached mid-chest on it.

She had never heard of a bhe’ghaal force so well organized or armed as this WAAAAGH! and she took immense pity on the people who would soon face their wrath. She had done what she could to sabotage the construction of many of the Gargants, but with the way Ork technology functioned, the lone Fire warrior held little faith that her makeshift explosives and strategic cutting and acid bathing would do more than slow them down, enough to allow evacuations with a bit of luck. Despite that, she had worked hard to make sure many of the lesser war machines, like the Kans and Dreads, would crash in spectacular fashion within just a few engine activations, and many Mekz, Painboyz, and Nobz among their numbers had met their end along the edge of her blade, glinting in the dark of night.

Wandering out onto the depot field where the fleet was parked up, she gave the titanic machines another looking over, testing and weakening external mechanisms covertly as she went.

“Oi, Lildeff! Ya bring me anyfin’ ta nosh on?” came a shout from several yards up one of the machines, the “Fist uv Maybee Mork,” if memory served. Looking up, La’al rolled her eyes at the severed purple head yelling at her.

“When wuz da last time A’ brought ya’ anyfin’, ya’ daft git? Ya’ dinnae even ‘av a stomach,” she responded, her own accent still not quite gone behind the Ork one she put on.

“’Oo needz a gut ta’ nosh on stuff?” Nashtoof retorted, swinging himself about on the chain dangling his head from the Gargant.

Shaking her head with a chuckle, La’al jumped up to the spot he was hanging from, finding a relaxed position on one of the many “small” guns jutting out of the machine.

“Pretty much any’un not an Operork, Nash,” the “greenskin” said, pulling some jerky out of her bag and impaling it on one of the head’s tusk-like lower canines. Her words were quite true though. La’al herself had decapitated Nashtoof an entire year prior. However, the “kultur” of the Operorks was extensively intertwined with their ability to sing. As such, the clan held zealously to the belief that their heads had literally no need for their body other than to get properly stuck into fights. Admittedly that was fairly important for Orks in general, but Operorks could be a part of the fight without ever needing to swing a blade or pull a trigger. Their songs alone could, as La’al had seen with her own two eyes, whip their brethren into an astonishing bloodlust, make their machinery work with nearly unparalleled efficiency, or even shake the very foundations of mountains.

“Lookin’ for’ard ta’ getting’ off world, finally?” the T’au asked as Nashtoof worked the piece of meat off of his tooth with his tongue.

“Zog yeh!” he responded before finally getting a grip of the food. “Bin way too long wiffowt a gud scrap!” His chewing on the jerky didn’t even muffle his voice, a concept La’al found even stranger than the fact he was speaking without a body. The line of what is possible had to be drawn somewhere, right?

“I’ze gotta say, doh. I get dis odd feelin’ dat we’ze gonna be in for a bigun soonah den latah,” said the bhe’ghaal, an odd darkness and calm coming over him, fully opposite of how any normal Ork would say those words.

“Whyz’at?” La’al asked, looking down at the head with mild confusion and surprise at the tone of his voice.

“Dunno. Jus’… jus’ a feelin’. Sky’ze getting’ dark, doh. Probubly time fer ya’ ta’ leave, den’. All da’ best scraps iz gonna be goin’ on bakk in town,” the hesitant tone and sudden shift of subject put La’al very much on edge. Even so, she nodded and hopped down from the titanic machine.

“Yeah. Prob’ly time. Dinnae wanna miss da’ gooduns. See ya’ round, Nash,” she said, walking back toward town and the sounds of its clamor. She had adjustments to make to the stellar radio she had been cobbling together in her cave over the last year before its first test that night, after all. But still, something was scratching at the back of her head in regards to what Nashtoof had said, and not just the bhe’ghaal’s tone of voice. It was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Until, like a sun cresting the horizon, it dawned on her.

Snapping around, she looked up at the system’s star, still high in the sky and as yet untouched by the growing storm-clouds. Yet it was growing darker and darker by the moment. Then, the sky began to roar with the sounds of countless fighter craft and dropships falling through the atmosphere.

La’al saw red. Not for the fighters, not for the dropships, not in their Guard colors. No, what drew the fury from the darkest depths of her heart was the drop pods, falling wave after wave into the badlands and sprawling shanty-towns around her. The drop pods. The jet-black drop pods. Marked with the jagged cross.  The Black Templars had brought their eternal crusade back across the Damocles Gulf. And from the Stayj, a bellowing cry of bloodlust and excitement rose to meet them.

(And so the climax approaches. I’ll admit, not totally sure about how well this particular part works out for someone who didn’t write the thing. Deeply sorry if parts of this story feel less than cohesive with one another. Don’t really have much of a commentary at the moment, but as always I’m open for any questions and critiques)

No need to apologize, and sorry I took this long to get back to you! The truth is just that I've had a rough spell and thus was quite inactive for a while, but thank you for still sending me this. 

I do not have too much commentary on this one; I enjoy the closer look at Ork cultural cues and societal nuances, I have always enjoyed those, so seeing something of a market at the outset, for example, was something I enjoyed greatly!