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I was reading through the Lexicanum orks quotes and I came across one quote that was essentially an ork in a shuttle or something telling a bunch of guardsmen about how to board a ship and scream WAAAGH properly a couple of seconds before doing both (as orks are wont to do) and it was attributed to an unnammed Sanctioned ork. Can orks be sanctioned and if so how does it happen why would an ork get sanctioned and what would it do exactly?

Blood Axes have a history of being exposed to human culture and even working with/trading with Imperials.

Deathskulls 'work with Imperials' in the fact that they steal their tanks to shoot fer dem with sum tweekin'

Probably from the early Rogue Trader days. Orks were originally quite interactive with humans and even had humans in their society (slaves/outlaws/mercenaries, etc.). These days Orks are much more savage and violent, and I prefer this depiction over the older one imo.

Orks can still be mercenaries for the Imperium even in the current version of 40k (that's probably why they're allies of convenience instead of desperate allies for a lot of Imperial factions). The only recent fluff piece I can think of for this is the Dawn of War games where Inquisitor Adrastia gets Bloodflag to go after Kyras for her, and Dawn of War isn't the most reliable source, but that doesn't change the fact that Orks are Allies of Convenience with the Imperial Guard in actual GW rules. It's allies of desperation that have "One-Eye Open". Allies of Convenience can trust each other enough that they don't have to watch their back all the time (thus lack the One-Eye Open rule), which therefore means the Imperial Guard can trust certain Ork allies enough to not have to worry about being bashed in the head by their Ork allies in the middle of a fight. That more than implies the possibility of Ork mercenaries in present-day 40k, since there aren't many other reasons why Orks would team up with IG in the first place.

Presumably these are only Blood Axes, though. It's stated that most orks wouldn't want to work with humies, but Blood Axes are more open to that.

As for "Sanctioned" Xenos, that was still "canon" (for a given definition of canon) as late as the Inquisitor specialist game and never retconned out to my knowledge. There are a few "sanctioned xenos" in there that are allowed to work for the Imperium. Note that a sanctioned xenos is an individual, not an entire species. However, these Xenos had to be sanctioned by the Inquisition, not the Imperial Guard. I'm not sure how deep the fluff delved into the concept, either. And I find it hard to imagine an ORK getting sanctioned (the two sanctioned xenos I know of were a kroot and a "last of his kind" unnamed species guy, both of whom were far more emotionally stable than an ork). Of course, Orks weren't as crazy back in 1st Edition. I suppose in current 40k, an ork that managed to get sanctioned would probably be something of a weirdo to other orks, but hey, it's a big galaxy.

Maybe in this huge galaxy, there just happened to be an ork that was a lot less "orky" than other orks. And he decided he liked fighting for the humies and was so unorky that he was actually RELIABLE and trustworthy (Gasp! What an unorky ork!). The inquisition realized this, and thus this ork was sanctioned and allowed to work within the Imperial Guard to help teach them how to properly krump the Emperor's foes.

It's a huge galaxy so it's possible I guess. It'd certainly be absolutely RIDICULOUSLY rare, though.

I can't attest to the validity of the quote as I don't recognise it, but my DakkaDakka namesake, Gogsnik, is a Blood Axe character I created for the Inquisitor game. The Inquisitor was an Istvaanian who liked to have an ork around to shed spores wherever he went and hopefully give the local human populace something to fight against.

Gogsnik is a pretty unusual ork and as a Blood Axe has not forgotten, nor forgiven, Da Big Party and so his time as an Inquisitorial mercenary is part of a much grander plan for him.

TiamatRoar wrote:

As for "Sanctioned" Xenos, that was still "canon" (for a given definition of canon) as late as the Inquisitor specialist game and never retconned out to my knowledge. There are a few "sanctioned xenos" in there that are allowed to work for the Imperium. Note that a sanctioned xenos is an individual, not an entire species. However, these Xenos had to be sanctioned by the Inquisition, not the Imperial Guard.

I don't have the book to check, but it's possible to play as a sanctioned xenos in the Rogue Trader RPG - including an ork freeboota. Not sure if the Inquisition have anything to do with it or the rogue trader just says "It's cool, this one's mine, I'll pay for anything he breaks." They're fairly powerful people, after all.