|
| |
Waagh Azun: The Warband of Brakka Azun Da Arch Bomba of Kago
There was a time when the Eastern Fringe shook to the fury of the
greenskins of Kago, a time brought about by the insane dreams of an Ork Warlord
known as the Arch Bomba who unleashed a crusade of anarchy and violence that
entire star systems gored and bleeding in its wake.
 Kagus
Leonis, an industrial world known only as Kago to the greenskin tribes that
infested its dark side, was once one of the unremarkable frontier worlds that
fringed the Eastern Fringe. Towards the latter half of 978.M41 it became
synonymous with death and destruction on a galactic scale.
History will remember the greenskin known as the Arch Bomba of Kago for two
reasons. An Ork who scarred the stars themselves with the ferocity of his Waaagh!,
Warlord Braka Azun, named the Arch Bomba by his followers, was notable for a
peculiar genius in the field of warfare, particularly his love of minefields and
war wagons. However, Warlord Braka Azun's true infamy stemmed not from his
ferocity or even his ingenuity, but from the fact he extremely cunning and
treacherous - even for an Ork.
RISE OF DA BOMBA
The Runtherds of his home planet tell of a time when the Arch Bomba was simply
known as Bari; a Blood Axe thug living upon the ork-held side of the once
prosperous planet known as Kago. As a whelp Bari had such a voracious appetite
that he gobbled down anything that moved and more besides. Though slow of wit,
Bari grew to a formidable size on a diet of fighting and eating and eating and
fighting, and many believed he would one day rule his tribe. They were right,
but Bari's meteoric rise through the ranks was not at all what they expected.
One typically stinking and humid day on the planet Kago, Bari was idly hunting
Grots in the disused industrial complexes that gripped the planet's equator like
a girdle of twisted metal. Down in the dark and waterlogged bowels of a rusting
manufactorum, Bari found a fat, meaty Squig that was too bloated to escape. The
critter glowed balefully in the dark, a sickly greenish-yellow that reflected
from the pools of toxic waste scattered all around it. Naturally, Bari gobbled
it down in short order, though it tasted even more disgusting than your average
dung-eating fangbeast. Bari's guts felt strange and his head even stranger. He
lay down in the lambent subterranean pools for a good long snooze, and days
later, when he woke up, he was a very different Ork.
When Bari eventually stormed back to his tribe, he was virtually unrecognizable.
Clad from head to toe in rusted metal and with fluorescent drool dribbling from
his ravaged lips, Bari towered over even the oldest and gnarliest Orks of the
tribe. His jaws had been reinforced with great jagged shards of iron bashed
together into the rough shape of a power klaw, and he had a look in his eye that
would make even a rampaging Squiggoth shuffle back into its pen. The first Ork
to ask if the ghastly apparition was Bari got his head smashed in and his arms
bitten off for his trouble. This bizarre newcomer called himself Braka Azun, and
no greenskin in his right mind was about to argue. In fact, even those who were
not in their right mind instinctively knew that the newcomer meant business - a
fortuitous turn of events, for if Braka Azun fitted in anywhere, it was with the
local Madboyz on the periphery of the Ork tribes.
An ambitious Imperial functionary named Blairs thought he saw an exploitable
resource in Braka. Blairs was the head of a cabal of Chaos Cultists determined
to overthrown the Imperial governor of Kagus Prime - the largest Hive on the
planet. If Blairs could get Braka to distract the PDF, then the Cabal.
Though many of the Orks in Braka Azun's tribe saw a natural leader in their
midst, the Runtherds whispered that the newcomer was dangerously unstable even
for an Ork. Anyone who disagreed with his wild claims or objected to the
deranged antics of his Madboy retinue was not killed but instead permanently
maimed. For Braka Azun knew that although Orks did not fear death, they
certainly did not relish the thought of a lifetime spent as a mangled lump of
torn flesh. It was only a brave or exceptionally stupid Ork who would meet Braka
Azun's baleful gaze for long.
Before long, Braka Azun had united the neighboring tribes. Thousands of
greenskins were bound together in awe of his legendary brutality and promises of
change in the fortunes of the Orks. Those who disagreed with Braka Azun's plans
got their arms or legs blown off to teach them a lesson, resulting in a roaring
trade in cybernetics for the local Painboyz. Warboss Hunka of the Snakebite clan
fared even worse, while sitting down to eat one day his chair blew up and he
lost all his limbs and his jaw ground into dust to prevent him buying new ones.
Word spread far and wide of this new Warboss, and more Orks flocked to join the
one they called the Arch Bomba with every passing day.
A Waaagh! was slowly building, with a madman at its heart.
THE MADNESS OF THE BOMBA
As the legend of the Arch Bomba grew, so did the insanity bubbling away in his
fevered brain. He regularly patrolled the shanty towns around the foothills of
Gork's Toof, the mountain which he had made his lair, picking out the strangest
and most eccentric of Orks for his personal retinue. Soon his warband became an
uncontrollable and violent carnival that left mayhem in its wake. On nights
illuminated by a full moon, the Arch Bomba could be found at the highest peak of
Gork's Toof, screaming at the crater-pocked planetoid above and threatening to
give it a good kicking it if it didn't stop staring at him.
The Orks in the sprawling conurbations below cared little that their leader was
so patently insane, for in his madness lay the seeds of genius. Braka Azun's
army of Meks, the Korps Heads, were spurred on by a mixture of fear and giddy
enthusiasm to ever greater feats of engineering as they attempted to obey the
alternately bawled and growled demands of their berserk master. From Braka
Azun's crazed visions were born such technological bastardizations as the
Killawagon and the Doom Dread. The Arch Bomba also insisted upon the building of
a fleet of submersibles so that he could conquer the great bladed fish that
lived in the oceans of Kago. Most of all, Braka Azun wanted to master flight so
that he could fly up to the moon and smash it apart with his bare hands.
THE WAR FOR THE PROTOFORGE
Braka Azun made significant progress in his bizarre quest when he led his
ramshackle armies against the neighboring continent of Meriga. Meriga was host
to an alpha-grade Adeptus Mechanicus Protoforge Complex whose inhabitants were
content, for the time being, to leave the primitive Ork cultures on the dark
side of the planet to their own devices. After all, the savage greenskins had no
way of detecting the ancient tech-city's presence, let alone crossing the great
watery gulfs between them. Or so they thought.
One moonlit night the Arch Bomba started to convulse and shake. When he
recovered what passed for his wits he flew into a rage, saying that the Ork gods
Gork and Mork had told him the humies on the other side of the world were
laughing at him. Within a matter of days the Orks were ready for all-out war.
They spilled and lurched across the ocean in Braka Azun's crudely-made
submersibles, fighting their way through sea crocodile packs and blasting apart
the bladed whales that haunted the deeps. At the helm of each of the vessels was
a Madboy lieutenant infected with Braka Azun's crazed vision, but despite this
(or perhaps because of it) the majority of the fleet made it to Meriga intact.
THE QUEST FOR THE STARS
It was not long before the Arch Bomba declared a state of war against his old
enemy, the Kagoian moon, who was staring at Braka Azun particularly fiercely
that week. Knowing that he would need some serious Orky know-wots to take the
fight into orbit, Braka Azun rebuilt the Protoforge to his own needs and took
the continent of Meriga as his new kingdom. Armies of Loota boyz combed the
humid equatorial deserts for more and more raw material, and mountains of scrap
piled up around the new fortress with which the Meks built ever larger and more
ambitious engines of war. Hundreds of engines of flight were built that ranged
from one-man koptas and rokkit packs (too short-ranged) to Ork launchers (too
messy) to Fighta-Bommas with enormous engine stacks that could not possibly
carry enough fuel to breach the atmosphere. Still the moon remained out of
reach.
Braka Azun's orders became ever more ambitious and peculiar and soon his
obsession with flight had spread to his Korps Head Mekaniak elite. The
iron-hulled submersibles used by Braka Azun to reach the continent of Meriga
were rebuilt with great rokkit engines and steel wings, turning them into
cumbersome but theoretically flight-capable spacecraft. Anti-gravity dirigibles
were built that belched and farted upwards from the scrapyards of Kago in an
attempt to reach ever-greater altitudes. Giant rokkits were constructed on
towering gantries that pointed straight at the moon. A series of messy trials
allowed the Korps Heads to reach low orbit but no further. As his Madboy
lieutenants slowly mastered the vox-networks of the Mechanicus city, word of the
Bomba's quest spread far and wide. Orks of all clans and affiliations put aside
their differences and came to witness the strange and violent machines built to
Braka Azun's vision. Infected by his mad dreams, tribe after tribe and warband
after warband joined the new Waaagh! that was spreading like wildfire across the
land, and soon the Bomba's followers numbered in the millions, every single Ork
consumed with the notion of leaving Kago and smashing apart every planet they
could reach.
In desperation, Braka Azun ordered his men to send out a call for assistance, a
last resort the Arch Bomba had never stooped to since his youth. He sent word
far and wide, offering a king's ransom in teef to any Ork with the power of
flight who could deliver his lunar nemesis unto him. Some of the greatest
legends of Ork kind answered the call, perhaps amused by the insanity of the
request, perhaps merely lured by the promise of wealth. Amongst their number
were Boss Zagstruk and his Vulcha Boys, screaming down from the skies on kustom-built
rokkit packs and butchering an entire warband of Braka Azun's Lootas to show
they meant business. Braka Azun was impressed, but as fierce as Zagstrukk was,
even the grizzled old bully's antique Fighta-Bomma could only carry a few mobs
of lads. It was not enough.
KAPTIN BADRUKK'S KUNNIN' PLAN
It was the legendary cunning of the Freebooter Kaptin Badrukk that finally gave
Braka Azun the solution to his problem. Badrukk, self-styled King of the Flash
Gitz and veteran mercenary extraordinaire, had an uncanny knack of turning up
whenever countless chests of Ork teef were on offer and an even uncannier knack
of disappearing off with them. However, upon meeting the glowering, towering
Arch Bomba in the flesh and hearing the note of raw insanity in his roaring,
bombastic speeches, Badrukk was so taken by the sheer madness of the Bomba's
plan that he agreed to help him.
The Kaptin, having been embroiled in dozens of Waaaghs across the galaxy and
knowing all there was to know about Ork invasions, could see the time was ripe
for the Orks of Kago to make their mark upon the universe. He looked with
disdain upon the Korps Heads' dubious attempts to get the Bomba into space and
shook his ostentatiously hatted head - there was simply no way these backwater
yokels could construct a starflight-capable fleet before the budding Waaagh!
lost momentum. Badrukk stalked back to his infamous attack kroozer Da Killjaw
and thought long and hard until his head hurt and his gold-plated teef began to
itch. So it was that Kaptin Badrukk's Kunnin' Plan was formed.
Badrukk knew that for the Waaagh! to leave Kago and become a true interstellar
crusade they would need ships - lots and lots of ships. The mercenary had known
ever since he got his first skull-and-shoota tattoo that the simplest way of
getting hold of something was to nick it off someone else. Waiting for a
suitable fleet or space hulk to drift into orbit could take decades. What was
needed was a large and undeniable threat to the remaining Imperial settlements
left upon Kago, a full-scale invasion of the hive cities in the freezing ash
wastes to the north. With his dreams of extinguishing the stars themselves, the
Arch Bomba was just crazy enough to be a Warlord on a galactic scale - if only
he could lead the united tribes of Kago off-world and conquer a world or two
first. Badrukk, always on the lookout for shootier ways to solve a problem, had
come up with a very Orky resolution.
THE DOOMSDAY GUN
The Arch Bomba, still obsessed with killing Kago's pallid moon, would only see
Badrukk when the pirate lord announced that he had a plan to take out the
planetoid once and for all. The Kaptin persuaded Braka Azun to build the
biggest, shootiest kannon that the planet had ever seen, a gun so large it
dwarfed even the weapons of the god-machines that defended the Meriga Protoforge.
This super-weapon would be so powerful it could blast the moon itself into tiny
pieces. Braka Azun nodded his head vigorously, luminescent slobber dribbling
from the corner of his mouth in heady anticipation. Pressing his advantage,
Kaptin Badrukk persuaded Braka Azun to 'test' the gun by firing it at the
Imperial capital of Furnacehive first. The pirate lord knew that such a blatant
show of force, coupled with the rumours of a burgeoning Waaagh!, would bring
Imperial reinforcements to Kago - and with them, a fleet of ships sufficient to
kick-start Kago's galactic crusade.
The Arch Bomba liked Badrukk's plan in principle, but had a refinement of his
own to add. The 'Megakannon' would be mounted on great tractor units and, once
it was complete, it would be driven at full speed into the hive before being
fired in a series of almighty blasts that let the moon know what was coming to
it.
THE GAZE OF THE IMPERIUM
In far-off Furnacehive, the Adeptus Mechanicus Techpriests who had abandoned
their beloved Protoforge to the invading Orks saw an opportunity to rid
themselves of the greenskin menace once and for all, reclaiming their forges in
the process. Using their vox-majoris subsystems the Senior Magi, led by a canny
old Techpriest called Prime Magos Sevastus Atari, intercepted the Arch Bomba's
declarations of war upon Kago's moon. The old Techpriest knew that a
conventional call for aid might take years to reach the right ears, but a
deafeningly loud declaration of total war from a new and ambitious Ork Warlord
would be taken very seriously by any who had seen the destructive potential of a
Waaagh! in full flow. After a touch of judicious editing to exclude any mention
of 'heddbutting the moon to deff', Atari amplified the Arch Bomba's ranting
speeches of conquest and broadcast them from an abandoned Vox Stellaria compound
in the planet's deserts.
Atari's plan worked. An astropathic choir upon the Dark Angels flagship Lionclaw
intercepted the broadcast just as the Astartes fleet was returning from the
destruction of a Threxian enclave. Assuming the signal to be from an Ork Warlord
with the world of Bhorc in his grasp, the head Astropath transferred the
communique to Grand Master Azrael. Azrael had sworn a vow that no more of the
worlds of the Eastern Fringe would fall to the alien whilst his men were in
sector, and he did not intend to renege on that oath, be the alien Threxian
biomorph or Ork Warlord. He diverted the course of his fleet toward Bhorc and,
alerting the rest of the Imperial battle group returning from the Threxian
prosecution, prepared for a full-scale invasion. The Waaagh! would be stopped
before it had even begun.
Azrael commanded his fleet's Astropaths to contact the Imperial castellans of
Furnacehive, only to hear that an armoured column of extreme size was churning
across the deserts straight for the hive walls. The column, which was mainly
comprised of several hundred Battlewagons, was allegedly escorting some kind of
extreme Ork super-weapon. Worse still, the scrapyards all across the neighboring
zone of Rustia played host to several Gargant construction sites. The Waaagh!
had almost reached critical mass. There was no time to lose.
"This greenskin Warlord must be contained and
exterminated. His lust for conquest must not be allowed to spread. Commend
thyselves, for we attack at dawn!"
- Grand Master Azrael of the Dark Angels
THE WAR FOR KAGUS PRIME
Azrael knew that the Ork Warlord known as the Arch Bomba must not be allowed to
leave the planet lest his fervor infect the other Ork worlds in that area of
space and spark a full-scale Waaagh! After gathering the finest tactical minds
of the Imperial fleet a four-point invasion plan was hatched. The Dark Angels
tasked themselves with the interception and destruction of the Warlord's
spaceworthy craft, no matter how outlandish and improbable they may seem. The
Howling Griffons, led by the unsmiling Captain Gawain Ravelle, were to make
planetfall in Rustia and destroy the Gargant construction sites. Ravelle knew
full well that nothing could spark the lust for conquest in an Ork's heart as
much as an effigy of the greenskins' barbaric god. The Cadian armored
battlegroup seconded to Azrael's invasion fleet was tasked with the
neutralization of the Ork air superiority upon Kagus Prime. They were to destroy
any aircraft they could find to minimize the chances of the Warlord's escape.
Finally, due to their skill in the destruction of heavily fortified vehicles and
emplacements, the Ultramarines and Blood Angels were given the weighty task of
stopping the Ork super-weapon before it was fired. The plans were drawn, the
invasion launched and, as Drop Pods glowed vengeful red in the low atmosphere
above the Arch Bomba's forces, the net began to close.
Far below, atop his ridiculously ostentatious Battlewagon, Kaptin Badrukk
squinted up at the descending landing craft and smiled his unfeasibly expensive
smile. The ships had come in. Now all the Orks had to do was win the war.
The Dark Angels made landfall without resistance and the Cadians took up
position inside the remaining hives. The Orks seemed doomed but Braka had more
than a few tricks up his sleeve. He had rigged the landing site the Dark Angels
chose with massive explosives (up to and including nuclear weapons) - and just
as the Dark Angels prepared to move out Braka Azun set off his trap. With the
Dark Angels landing force all but obliterated, Braka turned his MegaKannon on
the remaining hives of Kago. His Kommandos infiltrated the hives with his
signature explosives and blew open the doors of the remaining hive.
The massed Ork anti-aircraft blunted the Imperial air campaign allowing the
Ork air forces to retain control of Kago's skies while strategically placed
mines cut off Imperial routes of advance out of their landing zones. The
Imperial offensive was stalled before it had even begun. The Dark Angels were
forced back, step by bloody step as the Orks seized more and more of the planet.
Imperial Landers were seized and soon the Imperial transports in orbit had also
become warzones. It was clear that the War for Kago was lost. The Dark Angels
could ill-afford any more losses as their fighting strength was desperately
needed near the Cadian Gate, it was with great reluctance that they left Kago to
it's fate.
The Imperial Navy also had to cut it's losses, and after recovering as much
of the Cadian regiments and the surviving Tech-Priests they could, they also
left the system - leaving behind dozens of transports that fell to the Orks and
thousands of now-enslaved technoseers including the treacherous Blairs.
Having trapped and annihilated the Imperials - Braka had his ships and his
first target was the Imperial agriworlds of Decia and Turonne...
| |
Related Pages
Up
Jieshi Is'Malal
Maccabees
Tyranids & Cults
Waaagh Azun
|
