Twenty Years Earlier

The great desert of Phylum was scarred. The event would go down in the planet's history as the Great Scorching. The black glass stretched far beyond the horizon and even further still. Cities burnt, lives that shall never be known were lost. But it was the price the world had to pay to rid them of the ork horde that had descended upon their world and torn it asunder. The Great Scorching was hoped to have destroyed every last ork spore left. But it failed.

A single spore was spared by some cruel twist of the Emperor's mercy, hiding within the barrel of an overturned Leman Russ. The spore grew and festered and eventually spawned forth a sturdy ork. The first trial that befell the young ork was the monumental task of getting out of said barrel. He was too big to remain in the barrel, as comfortable as it may be and through gritted determination, powerful grunting and the cutting of his green skin against the damaged metal he forced his way into the open chamber within the tank.

The ork floundered for a moment and utterly destroyed two skeletons that had dared cross his path. After grabbing a hold and literally pulling himself up, the ork had his attention caught by one of the skeleton's garb. He liked the coat especially, fancy tassels and metal bits that gleamed in the light provided by a nearby hole. The color almost made him drool with its deep green.

After deeply admiring the cloth, he became immensely jealous. Why should this skeleton have such nice things when he had none! The injustice of it all! He would right this wrong the only way his instincts told him how! With incredible violence.

The battle began. At first the dead man held the high ground, using the environment to his advantage by cleverly remaining behind a dangling safety harness which quickly entangled the raging ork. But the ork had experience on his side! Throughout his life he'd killed at least two other skeletons and he knew their weakness. Ripping the harnesses away, the ork fell down against his foe and began thrashing violently. The dead man rattled as he was killed again.

Victorious, the ork had acquired his loot with only minor damage! He dawned the garb and even though he couldn't see himself he was certain that he was the most stylish ork for miles. And he was right. After two more skeletons were killed, the ork had a considerable haul of loot. A number of MREs, a new pair of pants, a hat, two laser rifles and a little booklet he'd pried out of the fingers of his shattered foes.

With a graceful PLOP he fell from the hole and successfully exited his birthplace. He was struck with awe as he stood and encountered the great glass road that cut through the sandy expanse. Following this awe came an almost crushing sense of despair.

Where's the fightin'? He thought, quite literally searching under rocks and wreckage for something to punch. He'd already beaten his first foes and was now left with nothing but… well, nothing!

After the search proved fruitless, he set out to find a fight. The Scorch was all he had to go on and promptly followed it, hoping it would lead him to something to punch. The trip was long. Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, months to years, years to centuries, centuries to millennia, millennia to EONS! Ok, so maybe it wasn't that long, but it certainly felts like it! Especially after he'd eaten all the MRE's he'd found on the first day of the first hour…

But the hunger didn't worry him as much as the inexplicable boredom of it all. The only thing he had to entertain himself with was the booklet he'd looted earlier. He liked the pictures inside showing guns and battles and all other neat things! But soon enough he'd looked at each and every picture more than an ork would look at anything without crushing it! He needed more. MORE. There were words, of course, but he couldn't read a single one. They all just kind of melded together into a big stew, and the thought of stew made him hungry again! But he wanted to be entertained and he knew the words were something that could relieve some of his boredom. So he tried to read, by shouting what he thought the letters looked like and threatening to eat the book if it didn't share its secrets with him. But most importantly he believed that he could do it. It didn't matter how difficult learning to read was, it just made his eventual victory all the better!

One day, as he threatened the cover with his usual relish, the letters began to unravel themselves and solidify before his very eyes. He roared out and thumped his chest in victory, causing a few of the metal dangly bits to jingle. He began to read, "Da… Da' Imperial Infan-tree-man's Upliftin' Primor?"