Xenos
Blood Axes
The Kunnin' Klan · Almost-Traitor Greenskins
XENOS · ORKS · KLAN
The Kunnin' Klan
The Blood Axes are the most disquieting of all greenskins, for they think before they swing. Long ago they fought humans often enough to start copying them, and what they learned has set them forever apart: they use camouflage, they form ordered squads instead of howling mobs, and most scandalously of all, they will retreat when the odds turn against them. To other Orks, who regard running away as the blackest cowardice, this makes the Blood Axes almost traitors, gits who have caught something foul off the soft-skins. The klan shrugs off the contempt. A dead Ork wins no battles, they reason, and they would rather slink off today and win cunningly tomorrow than die gloriously and pointlessly tonight.
Camo, Trade and Dirty Deals
The Blood Axes' defining obsession is the angle, the edge, the deal. They daub themselves in camouflage (often in colours far too garish to actually hide an Ork) and they trade openly with the Imperium for guns, vehicles and ammunition, a commerce so unnatural to greenskin sensibilities that it borders on heresy in Ork eyes. Whole tribes have grown dependent on subsidies of teef paid by Imperial prospectors, who scour old battlefields ripping the teeth from Ork dead to fund the arrangement. The klan will parley with the foe, hire itself out, and sell information to whoever pays best, all of which earns it deep mistrust. A Blood Axe sees only good business where other Orks see betrayal.
Kommandos and the Sneaky War
In war the Blood Axes fight like no other Orks, with feints, enfilading fire, staggered advances and the occasional genuinely clever ruse. The klan is the wellspring of the Kommandos, stealthy back-stabbing Boyz who blacken their faces, crawl through the undergrowth and cut throats behind enemy lines before the main attack even begins. Where a Goff charges headlong, a Blood Axe waits in cover for the enemy to overextend, then strikes the flank he left unguarded. They keep reserves, they hold ground, they withdraw in order, conduct so alien to Ork instinct that captured Imperial officers have refused to believe the greenskins facing them were Orks at all, suspecting some cunning human enemy in disguise.
The Massacre at Big Toof River
The Blood Axes' double-edged nature is written plainly in the Massacre at Big Toof River, fought during the Montar Campaign on Montar VII. Hired as scouts by the Imperial Guard, Blood Axe mercenaries cheerfully assured their paymasters that the Warlord Bullgarg, whose WAAAGH! had spilled from an ancient space hulk, was a minor threat hardly worth the worry. The Guard advanced on that word. As Kaz-Ter's Leman Russ tanks crossed the river, the trap closed: Snakebite Boarboyz poured from the Ork town, hundreds of warriors behind them, and hidden gun-batteries opened up from the watchtowers. Within three minutes, eighty-five percent of the Imperial force lay dead, and the Blood Axes had, as ever, picked the winning side.
How the Imperium Regards Them
The Imperium's relationship with the Blood Axes is a study in shameful pragmatism. Officially, trafficking with xenos is rank heresy, and the Ordo Xenos burns commanders who are caught at it. Unofficially, beleaguered Imperial generals have hired Blood Axe Kommandos as scouts and shock-troops more often than the records admit, buying greenskin cunning to spend against a worse foe. It is a devil's bargain that almost always sours, for a Blood Axe honours a contract precisely as long as it profits him and not one heartbeat longer. The standing Inquisitorial verdict is blunt: the Blood Axes are the most dangerous Orks alive, not because they hit hardest, but because they actually plan.
M41–M42 Status
The chaos of the Era Indomitus suits the Blood Axes perfectly, for a fractured galaxy is a buyer's market for cunning and a seller's market for guns. As the Imperium Nihilus drowns in war, isolated Imperial commands grow ever more willing to make quiet, deniable bargains with the olive-daubed klan, and the Blood Axes grow ever richer in looted teef and traded wargear. Their Kommandos infiltrate war zones from Armageddon to the Octarius warmones, scouting for greater Warbosses and selling the secrets they gather. Other Orks still spit at the mention of them, yet still march beside them, because in the grim arithmetic of the age, the klan that knows when to run is also the klan that is always still alive.
See also
Sources
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