Ork Kill Team #2 - Silent

This morning I finished the second member of the Ork Kill Team, a hulking mass of green, fungoid muscle named Silent.

Silent is actually the Boss Snikrot model produced by Games Workshop.  This particular version is in Finecast.  Pleased to say there were no visible faults that I could detect, so 2 thumbs up to GW.

Here's a bit of a background on Silent. He can be regarded as something of a lone wolf, although he started out his military career as one of the Snakebite Klan's boyz, then named as Zagdrob.  The real pivotal moment for him came during military action on the jungle death world of Namaste IV, against combined forces of the Imperial Guard Cadian, Mordian and Catachan jungle fighters...

The greenskins had been having riotous time of it until the Cadian 36th infantry and Mordian 9th mechanised took to the field and swiftly compartmentalised and practically annihilated them.  The rag-tag ork survivors withdrew to the depths of the jungle in a desperate attempt to make their way back to friendly lines.

Their ranks were thinned out further still whilst in the depths of the jungle, with many falling foul of the mysterious shadows that haunted the dense foliage, and others poisoned through ill-advised foraging of the native flora and fauna.  Meanwhile the main ork front line was being pushed steadily back, leaving the Snakebite survivors evermore cut off from the relative safety that strength in numbers could potentially offer.

The ammo had run out long ago, the orks now limited to choppas and make-shift weaponry.  Still the orks forged their way on through the steaming jungles of Namaste IV, their natural belligerence having given way to fear, and fear to full blown panic.  Their numbers further reduced by the shadowy creatures that stalked them, the orks were finally forced to make a stand on the bank of a sluggish, stinking river thick with algae. Here, the leafy canopy let through much more light than the deep jungle, and as their stalking enemies began to slink from the undergrowth, they were able to see them clearly for the first time.

Humans. Large for humans, definitely, but they were humans nevertheless. Their skins painted with stripes and blotches of green and black and brown.  Their bared blades darkened with mud and soot. Their movements cautious, yet aggressive, and eerily quiet.

No living ork fears humans, but the psychological damage of being hounded through the jungle was already done. Guttural but unenthusiastic war cries escaped ork throats, and battle was joined, fist, knife and boot.

Physical and mental exhaustion had taken its toll on the orks, and the weight of the human numbers soon pushed them backward into the river shallows.

A glancing blow from a half-seen knife pommel to the brow ridge put Zagdrob down, and he lost consciousness in the river shallows.

Sometime later, Zagdrob regained consciousness and one eye opened a crack.  All was relatively quiet for the jungle, but the humans still remained by the river's edge, checking and cleaning weapons, burning their dead.  Cautiously turning his head, Zagdrob could see that no other ork was left alive at the side of the river, although it seemed that some had made it to the far bank, judging by the smashed undergrowth.

Eventually, the humans stowed equipment, and seemingly communicated through hand signals and rapid chopping gestures.  Quietly they began to wade across to the far bank, seemingly making not a splash and leaving only surface eddies in their wake. They seemingly melted into the undergrowth close to the trampled trails left by the surviving orks.  However, Zagdrob knew that in the same direction lay the ork lines, so follow them he must.  And so he did, after salvaging what weapons he could.

He moved carefully, which was no mean feat for an ork, aware that attracting attention would mean his death, and yet also fascinated by the strange human tactics. So onwards he followed, and soon became aware that some of these humans must be injured, as he noticed the odd smear or dribble of blood here and there.

***

Eventually, Zagdrob caught up as a further skirmish was underway. He wormed his way closer, on his belly and slowly clambered back to his feet behind an injured human, who was hanging back from the fighting. Zagdrob reached out, clamping one hand tight about the human’s face, and the other around the back of his head and twisted. He pulled the corpse back into the undergrowth and dropped it behind a tree.  Once again he snuck toward the fighting to look for another victim.

***

This clear-up mission was clearly proving to be a worrying experience for the guardsmen of the Catachan 26^th Covert Ops team. When people start to go unexpectedly missing, even hardened killers can get nervous. Whilst they were stalking the greenskins, something was now stalking them.

***

Zagdrob soon began to realise that making the enemy nervous would play to his advantage.  It wasn’t long before he had the bloodthirsty idea of scalping his enemies, and hanging them from trees by their ankles, with their abdomens slit open, entrails coiling out like bloodied grey-blue serpents.

The effects of this were undoubtedly upsetting for the Catachans, finding their comrades mutilated in such a way. Over the coming days, nervousness gave way to fear, and fear to terror, as they were picked off one by one.

***

One night several weeks later, Zagdrob mysteriously appeared in the ork camp, covered in dried gore and bedecked with grisly trophies.

Several nights later as several orks joined Zagdrob at a campfire drinking session, he tried to explain his new found way of waging war. Largely, the reaction was that it didn’t seem an orkish way of fighting and killing. Another ork named Spagbol made the mistake of betting Zagdrob that he wasn’t “for real”.  It was at this point that Zagdrob reached into his mouth and cut out his own tongue, before pinning it to Spagbol’s chest with his knife and beating the poor fellow unconscious.

To this day, no ork has questioned his methods (within the range of his hearing at least) since.