How reliable are Ork mercenaries...

>thinking Orks forget about deals they've made.

Technically the inquisitor didn't agree to bluddflagg's terms, but he did kind of solve the whole problem so...

Just point the Ork in a direction and let him work. Though most of the time it's Blood Axe Orks and you can't trust them sneaky gitz.

If I ever ran something like RT then fuck it, I'd allow Ork PCs.

I can't imagine a campaign where the party would want to play Orks would ever have enough non-combat down time for them to get bored in-character. Meanwhile there's a whole new dynamic w/ xenos in the party.

On topic, I'd say pretty reliable. Any ork social enough to work for someone who isn't physically bigger than them probably has the presence of mind to respect non-physical strength. Plus if there's a healthy supply of weapons and fights, it's just like normal ork culture except you don't need to worry about being stabbed in the back for your teeth.

A mekboy merc would be fine with downtime building stuff.

If you're strong, tough hard enough, they'll probably listen to you a bit. But if you're those things you're probably not so desperate to higher Orks. Even then, they'll still eventually always betray you because no matter how hard, tough, etc. you are, you can't be orky enough due to not being an ork.

>A mekboy merc would be fine with downtime building stuff.

Would a Rogue Trader be fine with an ork mekboy building stuff on his ship as it flies through the vacuum of space and/or the warp?

>will eventually betray you
Not really. Merc Orkz tend to be the most social of orks and can respect a RT who can hook him up with good dakka and something to point that dakka at. I imagine an merc Ork can see that a RT is strong and important

>See dis 'ere? I took da liberteh of improvin' da engines...
>What does that mean exactly?
>Wut are ya deff? Da engines are betta now!

Likely to be a lot more loyal if their boss has done something that personally Impresses the Ork and inspires respect/fear.

This is possible for humans, with Yarrick being the most famous example.

>You blind ya git? Iz made it blue, so itz nice and stable nowz

Yeah, when I think about it, there have always been Blood Axes who would trade and deal with humans. So they can't have betrayed all of them.

>not making it red for more speed.

>Not doin both

Now DATS real cunnin

>Can't you see da red flamejob? It's fast an' lucky now!

>Red + blue
>purple

Wha... da enginez, boss! Dey GONE!!

But if ya do boff it turns poiple and den ya can't find it no more

Ricky would make for a great Ork character.

What da ZOG?! Look at what you gits did!

>ork is colorblind
>engine is now yellow

>engine explodes anytime it takes damage
>teef replace the shrapnel created

IT JUST WORKS

>IT JUST WORKS
Ork Howard pls

Arright, zog all dis guff, lez just paint the damn fings green.

DIS IZ AN ORK FRED NOW BOYZ

One time i was play as a ORK in DA ROUG TREDER game and i LOOTED a TRUCK and i make it all Sneaky.

>ricky just one of da boyz
>jesse the nob
>bubbles the runtherd
I'd watch it.

Alroit ya gits, tell me, what gubbinz does ya leik da best?

Ya'z gots t'have sum rokkits on yer stuff, 'cause even if itz red and stuff it can go even faster!

So if I understand right, the special kinds of orks that are smarter and more talented than others like Mekboys, Painboys, Lootas, and Kommandos would be the only kind of orks you would see in a Rogue Trader crew, right? You would never just see a standard run of the mill ork hanging out?

Are you joking, matey?

>Be Rogue Trader, fucking over humanity and xenos in equal measures
>though mostly dicking the elves, fuck elves
>See this
>Think that the Ork mercenaries I hired have finally grown more than half a brain and decided to commandeer a Land Raider or something
>Bit strange that they left great big rents in it. And that they are basically moving it instead of riding it
>theybeorks.painting
>When they get close to the enemy the entire thing breaks apart
>The orks aren't inside the vehicle
>They are the vehicle
>They were moving in formation towards an IG checkpoint wearing heavy armor
>tfw this worked

The kind of ork you would find in a rogue trader crew would be a combination of enterprising and adventurous. Something like a kommando is what comes to mind most of the time. I Dont think it would be worth keeping an average run of the mill ork around, he would probably just muck things up.

What if a rogue trader wanted a few Grots? Seems like they'd be managable, and they could laugh as you kill your enemies.

Ork kommandos are so stealthy some of them have never been seen.

They have real good snipers

Would keeping an Ork around eventually infest everything with Ork Spores?

DIGGANOBZ

depends on the climate.
Canonically they need certain environmental factors for the first stuff in the ork evolutionary chain to develop.
First there are a few mushrooms, then there are squigbeast that feed on the shrooms, then there are grots that eat the squigs and eventually there will be orks that eat everything else. But orks grow in womblike pods underground. So that will probably not be a problem on spaceships and the like when there is no earth or other kind of ground aside from sheet metal around.

You can also disinfect ork spores with fire. And I imagine most ships capable of interstellar travel will have a certain quarantine procedure to protect themselves from native ailments and pollutants. I imagine if you keep an ork on a spaceship you don't have to worry about infections. If you keep him in a humid warm cave you can come back in a few years to visit the grandchildren generation, though.

I don't think Orks can even function/survive away from other Orks? Don't they start to wither and die if they're away from the lads?

That is exactly the character I'd want to make if I ever get to play rogue trader.

They'd probably slit your throat while you slept and make off with all the shinies.

Extreamly reliable as long as you make it worth it for them. By that it means whatever gubbins / teeth they want and maybe something they think is extreamly valueable (like a commissar's hat / coat or a flamer they took a fancy to). Well that and a good, long krumpen. Humans are actually probably more likely to betray the Orks then the other way around, just be sure to leave quickly when dropping off the payment / having no follow up job.
They will not follow your orders however. You may be able to guide them a bit by giving a specific target that would get them something else (gubbins for killing the army, but you only get the hat if you kill their boss). Or half throwing a brick at them by not so subtlely-subtly dropping hints at a forts possible weak point.
Oh, and don't expect it to be a precision strike. They are a big green sledgehammer.

Underrated post

expung this

>slit your throat while you slept
dat'z da most grot-lover fingie an ork could do
and no un wants to be a grot-lover

>Dis zog neva 'eard bout Da Big Raid

>The Kommandos set out in a looted Tau transport ship, using captured codes to approach the Vor’sanar dockyard under the pretence of having been damaged in an Ork raid and seeking safe harbour. The Tau were initially suspicious of the lone vessel limping into their station, but every demand for identification was met with a satisfactory response, and the idea that Orks could undertake such a ruse was unthinkable to the Tau. It was a horrific surprise then when the vacuum seals opened and Ork Kommandos poured out into the station. By the time the Tau had mustered to repel the invaders, the Kommandos had reached the station’s reactors. Smashing them to scrap, they set off a chain reaction, dooming the station and allowing Waaagh! Grog to ransack Vor’sanar and ultimately the entire sector.

Mind you those same Kommando's also died in the ensuing explosion

It was fer da greater WAAAGH!

Dat was a good deff dat wuz. Roit orky

>IT JUST ORKS

They wither and die if they cannot fight

If painted purple then yes

>Ork mercenaries aren't the back stabbin' type.

En mass they are, but smaller groups you might be ok.

Youre also spreading spores everwhere you send him.

Pretty muich this.

What I don't get is why the hell Imperium doesn't make more use of them. Hive fleet? Hire some orks and throw at them to soften if up before IG can muster. Black Crusade? Inform some warboss of real good scrap to be had and mop up whoever survived. Tau expansion? Nothing a good WAAGH can't stall. Really, the only enemy you wouldn't want to send orks against is other orks, they would fight themselves just fine but you risk both groups combining if one warboss wins single combat against the other. You'd think Imperium would use orks nearly as often as IG, especially in hardest battles leaving little survivors, but no, ork mercs tend to be shown as very rare outlier...

First of all, that's heresy.

Secondly, you can't just wander up to an Ork Warboss and inform him of a "roit good scrap" in a distant system, and expect him to run off and deal with it, when there's perfectly good gits to krump right in front of him.

Orks aren't smart, but they are kunnin'. They know when they're being played.

Half of Ordo Xenos pacts with aliens all the time, though. I just wonder why some radicals didn't put together some protocol of redirecting WAAGHs into more useful places, say throw regiment of freshly inducted conscripts at them, then, when orks are disappointed, conveniently plant direction of Threat X to make them go there. Or hell, just hire/bribe orks outright, should still be cheaper than fighting both them AND the threat we sent them to pacify. Ordo Xenos is fucking incompetent if they didn't send WAAGHs at Tau/Necrons/Chaos at least annually...

The last Ordo Xenos inquisitor to direct a WAAAGH! at something cause the Octarius War so I think that sets a bad president.

Are orks capable of oinkbane "stealth"?

I am currently in a D&D campaign with a "space pirates on the astral seas" kind of thing going on.
Due to a major in-setting event, the planes are all fractured and are bleeding into the astral plane.
DM said its cool if we want to 'import' races and whatnot from other settings as it can be explained as getting dropped into the setting from another plane of existence.
The crew's ship needed an engineer.
So I made up "Mek Facebasha" - an ork mekboy who suffered a tellyporta accident and found himself in this game's setting.
He gets picked up by a pirate ship and starts using his orky know-whats to 'improve' the ship in various ways.
He's pretty content with things as there's lots of fighting and looting, and he has his own ship to fix up and work on.
So far he's added giant metal lobster legs to the hull, so the ship can land and scuttle across the ground.
After the crew captured a couple of small skiffs, Facebasha essentially duct-taped them to the ship so it would have more engines.
I really like being asked to describe how the stuff Facebasha makes works; I get to spit out a bunch of nonsense orky teknikol gubbins that no one, myself included, understands.

This is something that is happening to our ship.
The engineering deck has effectively been 'orkaformed' due to ork spores, and Facebasha now has a small army of grots to yell at while they do his bidding.

I guess you'd risk having an even bigger, uncontrollable WAAAGH!!! with all the side effects, instead of a, say, medium-sized one and another opponent. Or even worse, your original opponent bribes the Orks themselves, and now you face your opponent and the Orks.
And don't forget, against some opponents this was already tried. Inquisitor Kryptman sent the Tyranids towards Octaria, and we all know how well that went.

They ARE kunningly brutal. Or possibly brutally kunning.

As long as you're keeping him supplied with weapons, worthy fights, only give him missions that involve Killin/smashing/stealing something, and far away from you, pretty reliable.

The problem is eventually he'll get bored and come after you because he knows that you've probably got even better stuff stashed away somewhere.

>implying ork mercenaries aren't paid in MOAR DAKKA up front before the job

Orks grow in all climates. Valhallans fight orks primarily and they are from an iceball.

Orks aren't that predictable. The idiot savant nature of them makes it very hard to control. Also idea of throwing away human lives for xenos negotiations is triple heresy.