Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Are there any examples of them working with Space Marines or The Imperial Guard?.. or any branch of the the Imperium?

The Inquisition most likely uses them at times...
The Blood Axe clan are renowned mercenaries.

Space Marines...no.
However, I believe that there are is fluff saying that IG commanders will, in fact, employ Ork mercenaries. However, this is considered highly heretical, and these commanders are usually "investigated" for signs of heresy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

purplefood wrote:The Inquisition most likely uses them at times...
The Blood Axe clan are renowned mercenaries.

And freebooters as well I think.

the orks can only be bribed with weapons, which they then use to shoot up those who tried to bribe them, 'It's a good laff innit!?'

lukyboi wrote:the orks can only be bribed with weapons, which they then use to shoot up those who tried to bribe them, 'It's a good laff innit!?'

Automatically Appended Next Post:
So how do these mercenary things usually go down? is it like luckyboi says? In the end they just kill whoever helps them? is there any fluff about famous Ork mercenariness?

Vulpes89 wrote:

lukyboi wrote:the orks can only be bribed with weapons, which they then use to shoot up those who tried to bribe them, 'It's a good laff innit!?'

Automatically Appended Next Post:
So how do these mercenary things usually go down? is it like luckyboi says? In the end they just kill whoever helps them? is there any fluff about famous Ork mercenariness?

Kaptain Badrukk I think is a merc.

Really, this is an example of how the background for orks has changed over the years.

Specifically, the motivation of orks and how much intelligence they were said to have. Initially, orks were very much more like a more bestial humanity - our most violent traits increased combined with a general lower regard for life. A few older gamers will have read that orks were based on a guy in the design team who used to play about talking and behaving like a really rough sounding Londoner when he was playtesting the orks, and it was so appealing that the design stuck.

But at this time, the motivations were very much in line with what we might regard as a more base instinct of humanity and the acquisition of wealth - look at the very first 40k scenario in the Rogue Trader book - 'battle for the farm' where the ork captain is trying to get some treasure hidden there (how out of character does that seem now!), the 'freebooterz' supplement for 40k which is basically about ork pirates, and the other ork supplement. The orks in the stories in those books are very much more 'human' in their aspect, with more recognisable character traits. For many, I think this is why the orks held a special place in many gamers hearts.

But this has changed somewhat since then. Since Gav Thorpe added the 'mushroom origins' to orks, they have begun a progress towards being more bestial in nature. Now, rather than more recognisably human desires, in many ways they are more similar to what you might expect of Tyranids - i.e. they exist only to 'krump stuff' and travel using an instinctive sporing method). The moment they stopped needing some kind of basic society (essentially from the need to have the components of our own societies - networks, families, food gathering and the like) then a bit part of their motivations changed with them, and a great deal of the relationship between the player and their force on the tabletop, and how they relate to it, changed with it.

As such, I think a few of the older aspects of orks such as mercenaries, blood axes (in fact them doing anything other than running towards an enemy screaming) doesn't fit that well with their current concept. You can call it a 'dumbing down' (quite literally) but it is undeniable that their concept has evolved. Reading some of the older background books now actually makes me a little sad, you realise how much the orks have changed now that the 40k universe is so serious, and orks are one of the races that lost a great deal of their previous depth in this transition.

Just my thoughts on the subject, but I would be interested to hear what other people think about it.

Fluff I can't say.

However, Ork merc's also show up with the Tau on occasion. Or to put it simple, if they can get more dakka, and a good fight, it's on. If the fight turned out to be below expectations, the employer will have some nasty geared up orks in his face.

As for working with the IG, I highly doubt that. The whole xenophobia is to ingrained in the IG for any type of soldier to be able to work alongside an Ork.

Probably only see them working for Inquisitors. And even then, I doubt they are gonna mix the forces.

That's an interesting point actually Soladrin, and again shows how the game universe has changed. Specifically, the amount of xenophobia exhibited by members of the Imperium towards any kind of alien (or mutant). There used to be a bit of a grey area between them (hence the existence of orks such as the Blood Axes), whereas now there is none.

To the OP, if you are interested in older ork fluff I have added some images to this other thread from one of the old 40k ork supplements.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/180/342983.page

Soladrin wrote:Fluff I can't say.

However, Ork merc's also show up with the Tau on occasion. Or to put it simple, if they can get more dakka, and a good fight, it's on. If the fight turned out to be below expectations, the employer will have some nasty geared up orks in his face.

As for working with the IG, I highly doubt that. The whole xenophobia is to ingrained in the IG for any type of soldier to be able to work alongside an Ork.

Probably only see them working for Inquisitors. And even then, I doubt they are gonna mix the forces.

You heard that the orks work for the tau? Where did you find this?

nomotog wrote:

Soladrin wrote:Fluff I can't say.

However, Ork merc's also show up with the Tau on occasion. Or to put it simple, if they can get more dakka, and a good fight, it's on. If the fight turned out to be below expectations, the employer will have some nasty geared up orks in his face.

As for working with the IG, I highly doubt that. The whole xenophobia is to ingrained in the IG for any type of soldier to be able to work alongside an Ork.

Probably only see them working for Inquisitors. And even then, I doubt they are gonna mix the forces.

You heard that the orks work for the tau? Where did you find this?

Old novel, so it might be non-cannon by now. I think it's the 2nd or 3rd last chancers novel, so take it with a grain of salt. But it pretty much comes down to the Tau having a huge camp full of mercs along with their main forces. The reason for most of these not being represented on the tabletop being that the kroot, vespid etc. are the only ones used at lenght and in great numbers.

The Clans still exist. Forgeworld's recent books detailed a couple in a campaign. I think given how 'old is new again' recently in the design studio, we'll maybe see a return of the emphasis on them in the next codex. Certainly Zagstrukk is stated as being Blood Axe, the Komandos are listed as Blood Axe.

What was always said about the Blood Axe clan was that it would trade with humans for weapons and other bits and would work as mercs in their campaigns. In the old Waaagh The Orks days, you could take a human advisor in the Blood Axe warboss' retinue (usually a specialized Imperial Guard officer working undercover to keep the Warboss pointed at the right targets, away from the imperium, squashing seditious worlds or the enemies of the Emperor in return for tanks and weapons. In those days you could take humans in the army, either disguised imperial guard units or human pirates and mercs, along with ogryns with ripper guns.

The idea was that the imperium basically had a 'tiger by the tail' and were playing a dangerous game of steering it in the (hopefully) right direction and praying the warboss didn't wake up in a bad mood one morning and kill his human adviser to provide himself some amusement.

We've heard the Chaos Legions will return, we know the necrons are being given more character and various factions, I think it's very likely the Clans of orks will play a sizeable part of a future codex.

Pacific, I sadly agree with a lot of what you say. The orks have lost a lot of their flavor. I admittedly really like the spore reproduction fluff and all that, but I think the streamlining of the orks into green tyranids-lite has gone too far. There was a sort of golden cross-over period around the release of Gorkamorka, where the orks got a little more serious in terms of sci-fi, but still retained tons of culture (excuse me, kulture) and flavor.

Personally I still interpret the orks in that sort of middle-ground way: a bio-engineered, self-replicating army that comes with its own war economy, but with individual orks still having a lot of variation in their character and motivations.

As long as whoever is bribing them has plenty of dakka to give them, the orks will help em' fight. but one of 2 things might happen

1) The orks don't think the fighting was good enough for them, so they go and fight their "employers"

2) The orks finish off their "job" and go back to their home planet/spacehulk/kroozer. Than take their new weapons, and kill something else, sometimes the people who bribed them, sometimes someone else.

Funny drawing about ork reproduction