It is certainly that. One minute she's hurrying down the mountain away from the freak thunderstorm, the next there's a flash of lightning, and a few moments later, this.

"What the frak--am I dead, or hallucinating?"

”Greetings young one. It is something like both of those situations yes.” A voice booms in her mind, most probably from the too tall figure in the mask.

”You died and I am basically allowing your soul to think it still has a body so we can talk. But You have no body and you don't actually have a mouth to talk with anymore.” The masked figure crosses his arms looking smug and proud of himself via body language alone due to the blank white mask obscuring his entire face.

”I am Cegorach.” And he does a little bow with an arm flair like the upper class on her planet might do.

"Life after death. Huh. Well, pleased to meet you, Cegorach, you probably already know I'm Jennifra."

“Well... true death wouldn’t have been far away for you under usual circumstances. Daemons and warp horrors fill the Immaterium and devour the souls of mortals as they pass. It’s a big problem, I’m working on it.”

“I didn’t actually know your name but what I did know about you was your potential for change, It is what made you stand out out of all the souls of your world.” And then suddenly he leans in all interested.

”Does that sound like the kind of problem you would like to work on? A worthy challenge to lever your potential for change and ambition towards? To keep the souls of the dead safe from Chaos? Something of adequate scale for you to tackle rather than the petty problems of your idyllic homeworld.”

Given her prior agnosticism about the subject, this is both the worst news and the best news she has ever received.

"If the souls of the dead can be saved, I definitely want to save them. Where do I start?"

If his face were not hidden by the mask she would see it smiling predatorily.

”It won’t be eaaaasy~ you might die again, in a much more horrid way~ it is the longest of long shots.” He does a little happy twirl and sounds much too excited at the prospect of jennifra’s horrible death, the bells on his jester’s outfit jingling. “Still want in?”

Yeah, this guy's really weird. But he seems to be on the side of people-in-general so far.

"If it was going to be easy, somebody would already have done it. I'm still in."

He claps once and does another little jig. “Humans are such fun when they grow up free.”

Another being appears in front of Jennifra. A huge hulking humanoid with bulging muscles and leathery green skin just standing there. It quickly becomes apparent it’s not alive when it doesn’t move at all, not even to breath. Just a perfectly lifelike statue of a being almost.

On a closer look, it seems even less human in appearance. The jaw is too jutting and it has way too many teeth, the forehead is also thick and protruding and the eyes deep-set and slit pupilled. And the body proportions are more like a large ape with long powerful arms and a hunched posture making it seem less massive than it truly is.

”This, my dear, Is an Ork. This is what you will be living amongst in your new life.”

(He? She? The image) looks ugly, but strong. And kind of dumb, but you can't judge a book by its cover, for all she knows this is the image of a distinguished professor. She's willing to bet they're amazing at mountain climbing, though.

"Okay. I assume they don't speak my language; are you going to do some more, I guess magic, for that? Or am I doing to have to learn it the long way? More to the point, how do they tie in to the whole 'chaos gods eating the souls of the dead' thing? And what do you mean 'when they grow up free'? I was no freer than anyone else on Skystead."

“They started out as a race of genetically engineered weapons, all the information they need to succeed is coded in genetic memory and a psychic field they all produce. Including a very bastardized version of low gothic.

How they will fight against chaos? Every sentient race produces psychic energy that goes into the Immaterium or Warp a realm of thought and emotion. A bunch of horribly powerful psychic beings that personify the worst aspects of the mortal races have formed called the Chaos gods. They do mean things like eat mortal souls and send lesser evil spirits to possess and corrupt beings when they draw on the power of the immaterium or are only born sensitive to it.

Orks on the other hand...produce their own psychic field and have their own powers totally separate from the Immaterium! It's genius! Pity they are so stupid and brutish that that incredible ability goes completely to waste.

So, it will be your job to unite the orks and use their psychic and martial might against the Chaos gods and their servants, sounds fun right?”

He claps his hands together in glee again, this plan was going to be so much fun even if it failed.

”And Skystead itself was free. There is a great human Imperium that is tyrannical and repressive and backwards and luckily you never got conquered by it. The humans in it by and large are boring.”

"So, unite the Orks behind the idea of fighting the Chaos Gods, figure out how to fight entities that exist outside normal space, and bring down a tyrannical empire, not necessarily in that order. Fun." That last sentence is said sarcastically, but Jennifra can feel the heart she only sort of has beating a bit faster.

"The empire isn't your job to fix but if you feel like doing it in your spare time... And trust me the orks psychic field will let you fight ANYTHING, It's whole point is enabling fighting. If enough Orks believe they can hit a Chaos god with an axe then they can hit a Chaos god with an axe.

I pointed you at the worst problem in the galaxy right now, the Empire isn't even top 5 most awful things in the galaxy to most people, Most people would even point at Orks as a whole as one of the most awful things in the galaxy and you are going to be one of them." This really is funny, using one of the biggest threats to the Eldar and Humans to fight Chaos and make them a force for good, it was delicious.

"You are almost certain to fail but It's not like you have anything to lose right?. You ready to begin?"

Ah, so she's going to get an Ork body. Convenient. As for whether she's certain to fail, well, she'll find out. "Let's do it."

And the next thing she knows she is trapped in some sort of rubbery slightly translucent sack, part of her new Ork brain is telling her to rip her way out of it with her new clawed hands and then eat the sack.

Ew. Ripping it apart is yes. Eating it is a maybe, she'll try a bit and see if it tastes good. Okay, it does taste good, apparently this is a food item for this biology. Om nom. Claws are pretty cool except how in the heck is she going to use a computer like this, maybe Ork keyboards have really big keys or everything is voice interfaces. Whatever.

Surroundings: she's in a tunnel. There's nobody around, just glowy green moss on the walls and more plant womb pod things like the one she came out of. "Hello!" She says, surprised again by her voice sounding so different. If nobody responds, she'll pick a direction and start walking.

Nobody does respond for now. And won't she be disappointed about the state of computer technology in Ork society when she finds out. (practically non-existent unless stolen from other species)

Going down the hall the tunnel bends and the plant womb things get more sparse. But there are a lot of little slug things crawling over extra thick moss and fungal beds down this tunnel. pretty much everything organic looks pretty tasty to her Instinctual Ork mind, the slugs more so than the plants, but she isn't that hungry after eating her pod.

Eventually, she runs into a tiny green humanoid that seems obviously related to orks in some way herding the slugs. It squeaks in fright when it sees her but doesn't run away. Ork brain is telling her the humanoid is called a Gretchin and it is pretty tasty but has too many bones and is too lean, only eat when in the mood for something crunchy. Also less important than the taste to the instinctual ork mind is that it is part of a servant class and can unreliably be asked to do things with enough threats and teeth baring.

Okay, why the fuck does she have an instinctive sense that thinks servant classes are a thing. Yuck, nope, that is not allowed in her head. Also, evaluating everything including her neighbors for nutritional value is weird and fucked up.

Ork "social scripts" being deeply inadequate, she'll give the human ones a try. "Hello," she says, "What's your name?" This is accompanied by a brief attempt at a smile before she realizes her teeth are really not compatible with friendly smiles and gives it up as a bad job.

It is a very scared little Gretchin, most times Orks that come up to it demand its nicer food or its stash of teef. It tilts his head as if Jennifras's mode of speech confuses it for a bit. "Name is Blacknail oh's mightees Ork, Cuz I have a black nail." And he waves his foot and indeed one nail is perfectly black.

She can hardly blame him for being scared; she'd probably jump at her own reflection if she saw it unexpectedly.

Apparently centuries of separation have done some things to the dialect. "Name is Jennifra, cause, not sure why actually." Shit, now she misses her family. She'll just have to hurry up with this mission and go home.

"that not a very orky name..." Blacknail mumbles, then realizes he said that out loud. "I means It'z a great name for a great and mightee ork! strong and very green Jennifar please don't kick me?" A punting while not actually painful was pretty scary, being sent flying through the air was scary. Blacknail preferred to stay on the ground thank you very much.

"No, you're right, it's not a very Orky name. It's the only one I've got, though."

“You gotz a big jaw? Bigjaw is a very good orky name. Or Deffstompa if you like stompin’ things to deff. Toofripper if ya like steelin’ teef by ripping them out. Names like that you know. You must be new, you lookin’ for a minion?.” Blacknail looking up all hopeful with his big batlike ears flat to his head to make himself look more pitiable. Being an orks personal minion would be a big step up from herding squigs if this new ork made it big, and it looked pretty beefy. If the Ork got itself killed no real loss he can go back to herding squigs.

She's about to say that she doesn't want any minions, because she doesn't, especially not people who are afraid she's going to kick them when she's several times their size. Then she remembers that she's supposed to be raising an army, which is probably more like having minions than a lot of things. "Yup, I'm new. An' I'd like a minion. You offerin'? An' I'll think about the names." 

She does think about the names. Bigjaw seems the most reasonable, but if she's really going to embrace her mission she ought to go with something more like Deffstompa. Either way she ought to pick soon; apparently names are supposed to mean something and hers is hard to pronounce with these teeth to boot.

“Sweet! Well boss, I’s iz your most humbest servant.” Does a little bow. “It iz customary to feed minions six times a day and for a pay of...” Blacknail counts on his fingers and then just shows both his hands. He has 4 fingers on one hand and 5 on the other. “Dis many teef a day.” Obviously lying his little face off with that snide grin. If anything Jennifra’s instinctual ork mind is telling her most servants pay the ork a tithe of teeth(teef).

Before Jennifra was an Ork, she was a lawyer, and Blacknail reminds her of some of her clients. She has to laugh at the absurdity of it all. She expects not to have too much trouble obtaining enough food for both of them, even if the local currency is apparently teeth (how do they keep a reasonable level of inflation, if the money supply is maintained by battles?).  

She grabs two slugs and tosses one to Blacknail. "Let's go find something interesting to do. Maybe somewhere to cook these."