Consigned to the Grim Darkness
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Comment if you want. I kinda just typed it up on the fly while making updated rules for him, my personal warboss.
Even by human measurements, the Ork known as Groknar is old at three centuries. After the first decade was spent fighting his way to the top of a small horde, the rest of his life was spent changing his title and fighting style, trying something new out of the boredom of an incredibly long lived Ork life. Though he has risen to command many small empires, always he gets struck down by Imperial forces at the prime of his command, escaping somehow usually with curses flowing from his maw like a Valhallan avalanche.
Born into a strongly Snakebites clan, he spent most of his early years battling the primitive orks and the remnants of a lost human society on an unnamed planet lost since long before the Emperor took to his Great Crusade. The humans only held the Orks at bay with their advanced weaponry, and for years, Groknar had battle after battle with these humans, each one further and furhter distancing him from his clan's strongly anti-technology stance, until finally, he decided he had had enough. Knocking a bunch of yoofs around, he started a very uncivil war with the snakebites warboss, and through the use of a captured artillery cannon he decapitated the otherwise physically superior warboss, turning his head into splattered, charred remains and destroying the hill behind him, much to the glee of the overexcited yoofs.
Then, rounding up some newly born mekboyz and as many yoofs with deff skullz tendencies as possible, Groknar retreated his forces to prepare a surprise attack with the biggest gunz his boyz could loot or make in such a short notice. The attack was a resounding success, and the humans were wiped out or enslaved. Realizing that the horde would fall apart if they had nothing to do, Groknar looked to the stars, and set his mekboyz upon that particular destiny, all the while using yoofs and grots to trick his top nobz-- who were still bigger than he was at the time-- into killing eachother so that he could kill the weakened loser, and claim the glory. While some of the yoof disliked his methods, calling them backstabby, grot-licking, and down-right un-orky, usually these were left as a green smear before the day's end by Groknar's new deff dreads and killa kanz, who were all too excited at the prospect of going to fight enemies on a different rock than this miserable little planet.
Eventually, after a few failed attempts, Groknar's space program took off, and leaving what was left of the snakebites old timers behind, Groknar took almost all of his (by now, a bit smaller than before) horde into space, and through the warp. It is at this point that Groknar became a small note upon Imperial history, his fleet of hand-crafted, ramshackle croozas and rammers suddenly popping into space from the warp in the middle of a battle between the Imperial Navy and a Tyranid Hive fleet. The Orks were utterly delighted at the prospect of facing two enemies at once, but the Imperial commander decided to pull back and regroup his ships while the Orks took the brunt of the Tyranid assault. Too busy killing "dem squishy bugz" to notice, Groknar's warband decimated the Tyranid ships, but in turn took dramatic losses themselves, all the while giving the Imperial commander time to prepare their own counter-attack. It was a stroke of luck that Groknar was on his own wounded killkrooza battling a Lictor when the Imperial attack struck, because the ship was heavily armored enough that, though it was reduced to a molten ball of metal, his central chamber survived, and crashed in the nearby planet's ocean.
The Lictor, realizing that its hive fleet was destroyed and assuming that Groknar was killed instead of merely unconscious, worked its way out of the molten ball of slag, so that it could begin to terrorize the planet and sow its pheremones to gather a horde of surviving littler Tyranids, to begin the battle anew. A few minutes after it left, the sea water leaking into his wounds awoke Groknar to a fit of screaming curses and confused yelling. After swimming to the surface, he looked to the sky and realized what must have happened-- dem 'umies 'ad da bigga gunz and more boyz, so they won dat fight, see? But without any boyz of his own, Groknar was forced to basically attempt to do the same thing as the Lictor was doing, but with far less success.
Somehow managing to survive in the world's dense forests and occasionally attack their law enforcement agencies, Groknar gradually built his horde up again from Orks spawned from his own spores (though he really didn't think about it that way, just happening to find yoofs and knocking them over the head until they followed him) until he practically controlled the underhive of one of the larger hives, even having humans in his service through the use of raided supplies, he bartered, threatened, and killed his way into commanding all of the most prominent underhive gangs, and lead what he called "da littl'est waaagh!" (no doubt because of how many humans were in it) up into the lower and middle hives. This finally got the attention of the planet's PDF, but by then, it was too late, and the Ork had captured all but the hive spires, and was ruling the city with an iron fist, wielding an eviscerator taken from a dead red Redemptionist as his "boss' best choppa", enjoying the sight and sound of the crackle of its crude power field.
One by one, the planet's cities fell, until the Imperial Navy returned with reinforcements-- exactly as Groknar wanted them to. Having his Ganger cronies vox that they had secured a landing point, Groknar staged an ambush, and used the landing ships to board naval vessels, and personally took the largest that had come to aid-- a Dauntless light cruiser-- before sending more shuttles to ram and board the other ships, and having mekboyz repair the ones that were destroyed into loose working formation. No longer caring for the world he just took over (all da fightin' is over now, yah?), Groknar took the fleet and left as soon as possible, leaving the disorganized yoofs to suddenly be turned on by the gangers and traitorous PDF who had only allied with the Orks out of fear of Groknar's commanding presence-- and now that the Orks were without a strong leader, the world basically turned into one massive urban war, so the Orks hardly thought bad of Groknar despite his early leaving. When the Orks finally became organized again under Groknar's former second in command, the Imperium brought reinforcements via the rest of the imperial fleet which had destroyed Groknar's original fleet.
Riding high on victory, Groknar took his warband to the galactic east, further into the hive fleet, and took himself to "liberate" various worlds that were stuck in combat with the Tyranids. There, however, he was to have a second command yanked out from under him, when one of his favorite battles with the Tyranids-- one where he was going toe to toe with a Tyranid prime and his pack of warriors in the middle of a massive clash between ork and 'nid-- was interrupted by the arrival of a detachment of Novamarines, whom quickly took a valuable hill and began to use their superior firepower and tactical acumen to overwhelm the relatively young warboss and his battered Tyranid opponent.
Yet even this was a high point for Groknar, as he made note of their equipment, their tactics, and their vehicles-- especially their bikes and drop pods. Retreating back into his new Krooza with the remaining boyz (as best as an Ork can tactically withdraw at any rate), Groknar lead his ships away from the fight, much to the dismay of his Boyz. But he had better plans... desiring to create the fastest speed freak army to match the one that he just was bested by, Groknar landed his ship on an uninhabited desert planet, and set his mekboyz to work on making faster, killier vehicles, and developing something like a drop pod for his boyz. They were marginally successful, but were taking longer than he liked. In order to ensure his boyz didn't disintegrate into rampant fighting, Groknar began to organize them into two equal units, and had them participate in daily skirmishes against eachother, letting each of his nobz take turns leading, and seeing which ones were the most successful, and therefor most worthy of actually commanding parts of his growing horde whenever tactics required the warband to split up.
After long years of development, finally Groknar was satisfied with what his Mekboyz produced (though he wouldn't tell them that, saying he was just getting bored waiting around) and set about launching this larger horde on more warships, modeled off of the human designs with orky touches, heading to the galactic west, closer and closer to Ultramar. His travels did not go unnoticed, and the Imperial Navy was soon on him again-- but his new Rok Pods allowed him to quickly launch his boyz at enemy vessels. Sure, a few of them missed, but enough rammed into the vessels that the battle became a long war of attrition between the Ork boyz and naval marines. Groknar favored fast attacks, overwhelming each ship in turn with more and more boyz, but eventually the Imperial Navy, with the assistance of a Strike Cruiser of the Ultramarines chapter and its associated drop pods, far superior to the crudely crafted Rok pods and certainly far more accurate-- began to take their toll on the Ork force.
Not wanting to have his horde devastated and taken from him again Groknar ordered a retreat, having his ships break away to enter the warp, heading away and towards the galactic center. Not all of his ships made it back, but enough of the Imperial ships were captured that his horde didn't seem that much notably smaller. There in the Maelstrom near the galactic center, the Imperium lost track of him and he began to incorporate local smaller Ork bands into his growing horde, while clashing with heretics and pirate and looting what he could. Avoiding the larger Chaos contingents, Groknar decided to once again change his tactics, and set about a long campaign of quick strikes and looting without ever letting himself be dragged into a long battle. In this time, he ran a path of ruined minor outposts and settlements from the maelstrom up north, going around Segmentum Solar through Segmentum Tempestus and avoiding the bulk of the Imperial Navy. It was only after decades of this that he became bored and decided, finally, to commit himself to a full fledged battle on a fortress world in Segmentum Pacificus.
Unfortunately for himself, he couldn't have picked a worse time, and it is this particular battle which caused his name to be truly etched into the annals of history. Attacking the fortress world of Anofrost, Groknar's forces were repeatedly pushed back from the planet's primary fortress by a young captain, who took over when Groknar literally flattened the governor-general commanding the planet with his Rok Pod. The battle lasted for years, and Groknar had several infamous duels with the Lord Commissar whom had given the Captain her command, before finally slaying the commissar and taking his hat, as well as his title (when asked about it, he said it was out of respect for the 'umie's fighting ability, and his having such a nice hat).
Despite this, Groknar was infuriated at being unable to crack the defense of the planet, and began to change his tactics more and more, and the battle drew out over years before finally the beleaguered defenders were relieved by fresh troops, while Groknar's own forces were beginning to be split apart from within due to a carefully placed Callidius assassin. Even though Groknar managed to kill the assassin, he was so badly wounded that he had to retreat lest his impetuous second in command kill him in his weakened state. Taking a loyal group of kommandos with him onto his flagship, he stole away into the warp once again, and it was this replacement of leadership that allowed the reinforcements to put down the Ork invasion.
Maddeningly angry at once more losing his horde, Groknar just barely was talked down from a suicide attack by his Kommando Nob, and instead began to take up life as a Kaptin, slowly growing into the group and eventually taking up the Kommando ways himself, along with the other ideas he has developed over his years. After nearly half a century more of raiding and pillaging in the name of fun and piracy, Groknar was finally ready to get once again head into battle, this time at the head of a smaller, yet far more capable horde than his previous ones... a horde which would strike without warning and without mercy, before disappearing into the darkness like shadows and nightmares. Where exactly the long-lived warboss would strike next was a topic that the Inquisition even established a small task force to figure out.
After all, what doesn't kill an ork only makes them stronger. And a lot of things have tried to kill Groknar Skullsplitta over his long years of life!
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" -KingCracker
