The Making and Unmaking of a Heretic:
a tale of the Sanguinary Utnapishtim.

Kalnark’s journey to heresy began when he was given the job of liaison to a band of Ork mercenaries in the Mighty’s unending struggle to take Enlil. Kalnark was not a commander — one does not “command” Orks, one points them in the general direction of the enemy and hopes for the best — but he did try to ensure that the enthusiastic efforts of Boss Hackorz and his boyz bore some relation to the overall war effort. The Sanguinary Utnapishtim was less xenophobic than most human societies, but at first Kalnark, like most humans, was repulsed by the crudity of his new charges. Still he had to admire their dedication to violence, which rivaled that of the Mighty.

Then one day, after a particularly stimulating battle, the fatal thought occurred — maybe the Orks’ dedication to violence did not rival that of the Mighty, but exceeded it. Orks were after all free from the Three Impediments that emanated from Khorne’s hated rival Chaos gods — desire, disease, and overthinking. They were not mere berserkers either, they killed with a discipline and thoroughness that seemed to emerge organically, rather than the top-down command structure of the Mighty. So did that not make them even better servants of Khorne than the Mighty?

Kalnark brought his questions to the chaplain, Pater Tshanyag, who pointed out that Orks did not honour Khorne, and that although their proficiency in slaughter should be admired, their killing was spiritually meaningless and shortsighted, not even approaching the goal of greatest slaughter for the greatest number. Tshanyag made a note to have Kalnark taken off Ork liaison duties. However, she was promoted and transferred two days later after her superior took an unscheduled retirement with six inches of Tshanyag’s chainsword in her gut and none of Kalnark’s fellow officers wanted Ork liaison duties, so the matter was dropped.

Kalnark’s colleagues began noticing he was dropping Orkish words in conversation with his fellow Mighty and incorporating Ork flamboyance into his dress and conduct. He wore a necklace of teeth pulled from the jaws of his dead enemies in the Ork fashion. They wrote this off as simply a result of the time he spent dealing with Orks, although some were concerned, particularly when they heard Kalnark muttering under his breath about “zoggin’ humies.” Hakorz and his boyz, by contrast, found the idea of a humie trying to be an Ork hilarious.

Kalnark found it increasingly difficult not to draw the logical conclusion — that if Orks were better killers than the Mighty then their patrons, Gork and Mork, were not inferior to Khorne but superior. Khorne was a mere servant of the true gods of brutally cunning slaughter. He began to dedicate his own kills not to Khorne, but to Khorne’s masters, Mork and Gork. Perhaps those humies who pleased Gork and Mork through their cunningly brutal killings would be reborn as Orks, a possibility growing to obsess Kalnark. How limited the killing capacity of the human body seemed next to the Ork!

“'ere, humie, you want a real weapon?” asked Hakorz, offering Kalnark an Ork gun left by one of the boyz who had been blown apart by an Enlil defender. Ork weapons posed a challenge to human strength — yet another mark of human inferiority! — and there were bad stories about humies who tried to use Ork weapons. (How Ork technology worked was still largely a mystery.) By this point, though, Kalnark was just thrilled by the possibility of shooting like an Ork. He offered a brief prayer of thanks to Mork and Gork as he took up the weapon, and carried it with pride into the next attack on the defenders of Enlil. It turned out, however, that these bad stories were true; Kalnark was killed when the gun blew up as he was trying to shoot an Imperial.

Hakorz and the boyz got a good laugh out of it, though.