Librarium

Scallop Stars First Address to the assembled Antona High Command

Orks are seen by most of our populace as the bestial ogres of childhood fairy tales; unsophisticated, aggressive and disorganised. Those in authority know this to be far from the truth. Were the greenskins truly incapable of organisation, of maintaining supply lines or supplying their forces with reliable materiel with which to wage their wars, there is no chance at all that they would still remain one of the preeminent threats to mankind's suzerainty of the Antona Australis sector in this thirty-seventh Millennium.

It is true that an average ork is an unsophisticated creature, little concerned with the grand play of strategy across warzones, let alone across planets or systems – but could not the same charge be made against the average guardsman of the Imperium; indeed, of all save the greatest warmongers, officers and battlesmiths in the Emperor's armies?

To understand grand warfare, a human must have a peculiar mind. Insofar as we are able to determine, meanwhile, an ork needs merely to be successful; triggering physical and mental changes that render him a startlingly acute, if single-minded, instrument of war. Understand, all of you; understand that the greenskin mind is utterly alien to ours, in ways that belie any physical similarities, however distasteful such recognition must be. 

The ork is a dark, barbarous mirror held up to civilised mankind. Gross in physical stature, intimidating in their resilience and with a bloodthirsty nature that is all too obvious from the first time one witnesses the barbarity they inflict on vassal worlds or defeated enemies. To the ork, primacy goes to the victor. It is in this alone – that startling purity of vision – that they match mankind. It is in this, that they prove their great threat.

In this coming war, the greenskins will test the mettle of each of the men and women in our common soldiery in physical combat. We will be similarly tested at the strategic level. You must not underestimate the intellectual threat of the ork, for the grand masters of the greenskin species will not hesitate to take advantage of complacency, incompetence of command, or even your sheer bad luck. Nor, indeed, shall I.

You can ill-afford the comfort of the common factotum of the Imperium who – if he even believes that xenos exist  – takes comfort that the Emperor will protect him and his kin from the greenskin hordes. The Emperor helps those who help themselves, and I charge you with remembering my watchwords for this campaign: 

Be vigiliant. Be resolute.

Beware.

Extracted from the Lord Commander Ultima Yvas Abattol's First Address to the assembled Antona High Command, immediately prior to the departure of the three Grand Fleets.