In one of the many caves of a Ork infested asteroid, the birthing pod of an Ork boy is reaching… Maturity? Ripeness? English does not have a term to describe the moment when a wet fungal sack growing from the wall is ready to have a sentient bio engineered warrior also made of fungus burst from it. But this pod is ready to pop, soon a new Ork boy will be born, ready for combat the very second it tears itself free from its fungal birthing sack.

The more experienced Gretchin in charge of growing and taking care of the fungal ecology of this asteroid have noticed this fact, and have already scarpered off to other parts of the asteroid. They don’t want to be around a fresh spawned Ork who might be peckish and want to eat one of them as its first meal.

He remembers graduating, and then arriving surrounded by unfamiliar faces, and then … nothing. It's probably all a psychic mal. He tries to fight it off, but he's out of mana and his his anima is missing. Not like a maleficer's shattered anima, like a mundie. And his body feels wrong. What.

Well, being in some kind of weird enclosed space is probably not what he wants. The case where this is a hallucination doesn't matter, he's already dead there and just hasn't realized it. He'll try his best to leave.

Thick and stubby, but very sharp, Orkoid claws easily help him tear his way out of his birthing pod. He escapes onto the ground of the cave along with a lot of green slime.

His body won’t just feel wrong, it’ll feel strong. Like a insanely roided up body builder was then perfected and tweaked so everything fit together better. Whole extra sets of muscle groups when compared to the human standard set, tensing and shifting under the green thick skin. There to increase strength and speed to beyond olympian levels.

There are new instincts telling him to eat whats left of the pod stuck to the wall. It’ll be good for him, probably.

Well, better to feel strong than to feel weak. Is someone … drafting him into a gate guard program? Where they're testing 'what if mundies, but really strong and aware of mal weaknesses' or something? He was hoping to rest after graduation, but hopes aren't plans. There's probably only the one way to rest available, and he'd much prefer the kind of rest where he can wake up again, so he'd better be alert and capable and look useful.

He'll give eating the pod a try. Food is food, and at least in his memories he still feels kind of starving.

…why is he green? He's never really heard of plausible reasons for this aside from mundane ones like paint, and this seems like pretty good paint if it's paint. Then again, it's been 4 years since he was outside and he was never a paint researcher. He'll think about it more in the future if he lives and has spare time.

The pod is pretty tasty! Sort of like a very meaty greasy mushroom with extra msg, but also not much like that at all because there are a whole bunch of new flavours his tongue can taste now, most of them pleasant ones.

Instincts are telling him this pod flesh is so tasty because it his his pod, and someone else's pod would taste bad. It would be be bad to break the other pods open for eating.

There are other pods on the walls, every few hundred metres or so. Other features of this tunnel include lots of bio-luminescent mushrooms that the instincts say don’t taste good, and big fleshy green-gray mushrooms with caps about as wide as his very broad face, the instincts tell him those are filling but bland.

There’s something small moving at one end of the tunnel, but it is too small to make out, even for the rather good eyes he now has.

Food! That isn't illusioned nutrient sludge!! And there's more, just around, which is presumably also not nutrient sludge, because he is not in the Scholomance! He was hoping to have a hamburger and a big smoothie when he got out, but still, food that is not nutrient sludge! He heads for the allegedly filling but bland mushrooms and starts eating some, because if someone wanted to poison him with fake food instincts they could have just killed him earlier, so probably the food instincts somebody shoved into his head are not designed to kill him.

Do his instincts know how long the mushrooms last after being picked or how to preserve them or what the small moving thing might be? Has anyone left out any clothes?

To human tastes, the wall shrooms have plenty of earthy flavour, they sure are very mushroomy mushrooms, but they don’t stimulate all the extra flavours he has access to now. Instincts agrees that all food is good, but more flavour better.

Instincts says mushrooms will have more flavour if left for -indeterminate long time-, but it is probably a strange moldy flavour, instincts doesn't seem to mind the idea of eating moldy shrooms.

No clothes around, not that there is anything to cover up on this body, since it is lacking genitals and nipples.

Instincts say if you want to see far away small thing, get closer. This is obvious. If the instincts were a person it would be disappointed. 

Interesting opinion about mushrooms, instincts. And he has plenty of things to cover up on his body, like his feet, which a faraway small thing might bite with a magical or very poisonous bite. There's a reason people spend so much of their weight allowances on shoes, y'know. Though there is all this unguarded food around, which is good for recovery, and this form is a lot stronger than his actual body, and possibly he actually has more spare resources to recover from injury than he's used to, though there's no cloth or disinfectants or thread and needle around, much less actual modern medical supplies, which isn't amazing.

He'll go inspect the small moving thing on the basis that it seems to be one of the more interesting things around here and he badly needs to get a sense of the area, unless there's some obviously exit-ish route, because going outside would be nice and also a good way to get a sense of the area.

When he heads closer he sees a tiny green person! Looking similar to Ibrahim in colour and general themes except for the fact this person would barely reach his knee and is very gangly and skinny, and its face is much more pointy with a big nose and floppy pointy ears. It is using a rope to try and desperately pull along a fat lizard-slug that is almost taller at the shoulder than it is, this animal is what Ibrahim actually saw moving in the distance.

The little green person is muttering to itself as he approaches, and it is audible from further away than you would expect. This new body has good hearing too.

“Move it you stupid squig, if you don’t hurry up the big hungry lookin ork is gonna eat us both! Only I gets to eats you!” The little green person is really straining to pull the lizard-slug along, but the animal seems unaffected by the pitifully efforts of the little green person and plods along at its own lazy pace.

Well, threats are a traditional information gathering technique and apparently his body has already made his! "I won't eat you if you answer my questions."

Is he going to eat a person if they refuse to answer his questions? Probably not, his parents have discussed the circumstances under which to resort to cannibalism and this does not qualify. There's abundant mushrooms, he doesn't need the disease risk, and enclavers get really picky about it. But the tiny intimidated green person doesn't need to know that.

“Aaaaaahk!” The little guy leaps almost his entire height into the air in panic when addressed. It turns to face you, its exaggerated body language practically shouting its terror to the world.

”I’z gonna answer anything you want oh greenest and mightiest ork! I iz nothing but tough bones, not even the fun crunchy kind, no reason to be eatin me.”

The expressive wide face of the creature hides nothing, it clearly has an idea, then looks pained at that idea, then resolves to go through with it.

“I iz a useful and good grot, brings you breakfast!” It gestures to the slug-lizard thing. The ‘grot’ clearly does not want to give up the lizard thing, but feels it probably has to to stay safe.

The instincts say the little guy is perfectly acceptable food, but it is right about being rather bony, should only eat when bored or to keep the other grots in line using fear. The lizard practically radiates an aura of delicious to the instincts, that’s a lot of good meat. The bones of the slug-lizard thing are also useful weapons if you have nothing better to use.

"Where am I? Who put me here? What do I do to get supplies?"

The lizard might be delicious-smelling, but there are plenty of mushrooms, and probably they will taste even better if cooked.

“This iz da big Rok!” Wow, easy question. Getting to tell stuff to an ork rather than the other way around feels kinda neat to the little grot.

Oh wait this next question doesn’t make sense, but you can’t just tell that to an ork or they get grumpy. “Yous waz just born? You is here cuz thas where your pod grew?” Aaaah he hopes that’s a satisfactory answer.

”Uhh to gets things, you takes whatever yous likes as long as you is bigger than whoever claims it already. Or sometimes da big boss gives out war things before a waaagh.” The grot is unhappy to say this next part, but answering questions is his way of not being food right now. “And yous could make crafty grots craft you things…” He doesn’t have any crafty skills! He hopes the ork doesn't demand he produce something right away.

This prompts additional questions, like "where is the big rock?", "who is the big boss at war with?", "where are the crafty grots, and do I have to fight someone to get supplies for them to use to make things?", et cetera. Presumably the answer to these will also prompt additional questions.

The grot is happy to answer follow up questions, the more useful it seems, the safer it is! Many answers get a little rambly or assume existing knowledge Ibrahim doesn’t have, and a lot of the time is wasted on shameless flattery. But eventually a rough idea of Ork society can be picked out from the noise.

The big rock is in fact an asteroid hurtling through the void of space, with the help of big ‘rokkits’ to help it sorta aim itself. ‘Da big rok’ is full of tunnels for growing things, while the surface is where Orks tend to live.

An entire interrelated fungal ecology is what everything on the ‘da big rok’ seems to come from. From the food shrooms, the slug-like animal varieties, called ‘Squigs’, the warrior and leader caste of ‘Orks’ and the servant caste of ‘Grots’. All come from the same spores. If its green its probably part of the Orkoid ecology.

Orks are led by a Warboss, to lead them to war with basically anyone with loot or who looks fun to fight. Whoever krumps (defeats) the Warboss gets to be the new Warboss.

Crafty grots generally are kept by the stronger Orks, who can trade their services for ‘teef’ (teeth), which is the major currency. Sometimes teef can be substituted by ‘bitz’, which are useful crafting materials. If you want anything of your own, including crafted goods or supplies, you either trade teef for it, or take stuff nobody is going to bother fighting you over, or just win the fight if you take something worth fighting over. Or, if you are a speedy and sneaky grot, run fast enough into a small enough hole that you aren’t caught. Obviously this kind of tactic will probably not work for such a strong and green and mighty Ork such as yourself.

There are some rare Orks who do skilled labour that can be traded with, ‘Mek-boys’ do machine stuff. Generally they do much better work than a crafty grot. A Mek-boy made ‘Shoota’ (gun) is much less likely to explode and blow your fingers off! And growing back fingers sucks, not fun at all. ‘Doks’ or ‘Pain-boyz’ do surgery and limb replacements, but are all universally known to be crazy and experiment on their patients, if it’s not life threatening you don’t want to go to one. ‘Runtherdz’ or ‘Slaverz’ control and corral Grots and captured alien slaves or animals, the grot does not seem to be fond of these ones when talking about them. There are other kinds of specialised Orks but none that really matter… or that this grot knows much about.

The big takeaways are, might makes right, obey the Warboss unless you think you can take him, grots actually have a disgusting taste and are not at all worth eating, and grots are definitely worth protecting because of how useful they are (the instincts feel this grot is a lying little shit about grots, but in an amused way), and don’t be left alone with a Painboy. 

Well. This seems concerning for his life expectancy, though apparently he does have minions now, which is neat. Why do his instincts not think minions are useful? Offering minions a bit of protection so that they do a lot of work for you is an obvious good choice, that's why everyone who can do it does it.

How does an smart ork go become a mek-boy or a pain-boy? If a pain-boy isn't crazy and doesn't experiment on his patients as long as the patients pay him, will that be good for getting resources and seeming useful? Is there a good place to practice fighting?

You just… sort of are a mekboy or painboy? If you don’t just come out of the pod wanting to fight, you already know what else you want to do and how to do it. Ya give a mekboy some bitz and they just make things. The grot mutters to himself how it’s unfair mekboys just get to know how to make ‘Big Dakka’ (overwhelming gunfire or artillery).

For fighting, just go up to any ork roughly your own size! Most orks will be happy to have a friendly scrap, no ripping limbs off or stabbing the brain, a proppa spar. Or if you want an audience and to bet teef, theres always the pit. This grot used to run bets at the pit before a bigger grot and his friends muscled him out.

Well, he knows some stuff about medicine. He'll ask the minion more about what pain-boyz do, and how long it takes to recover from a proper spar, and whether the minion has a name and wants to follow him around and keep being useful and maybe be protected from other orks if the other orks can't or don't bother to beat up a newbie ork. (The minion might be busy with tasks from some other scarier ork, he doesn't want to rule that out.)

Painboys put limbs back on, or other peoples limbs on, or sometimes parts of squigs or big metal mek claws on. Metal claws are cool but this grot wouldn’t want to end up with a squig for a leg, or a leg for an arm. Painboyz are crazy after all and like to experiment.

For healing, depends how hurt you get? If no bones are broken not very long at all, especially with something to eat afterwards. Some bones can take a few days to heal if they get especially badly shattered, if the other boy is really trying to turn them into powder. Sometimes bones can heal funny though, it’s rude to smash em up too much during a proppa spar.

Nobody has ever asked this grot for a name before! Other grots call it Blacknail because one of its nails is black. Blacknail judges him pretty big for a fresh spawned ork, and would gladly be its minion. Minions are sorta like pets, way less likely to get eaten. Blacknail declares proudly that he will be the most useful grot he has ever met. Then blacknail rather audibly mutters that he's the only grot he's ever met and chuckles to himself over how funny that is.

Well, the minion position only stays available if he keeps being useful, so good ambition. He's going to want cleaning and sewing and cooking and notetaking, and he can explain how to do all of those the way he wants. Does Blacknail know how to read? If not, is Blacknail familiar with drawing and the, uh, idea of symbols corresponding to meaning?

Also, his name is Ibrahim. If Blacknail can't pronounce it correctly yet, that's okay, but Blacknail should practice.

If cloth is kind of worn and dirty and not in very useful shapes, does that mean nobody will really care about fighting people who take it? Is there soap and clean water around somewhere? What's the thing Blacknail brought, is it useful, can it talk?

(He knows the outlines of how to make soap but not the details, and it's possible that producing and experimenting with lye is the domain of the strong, because the strong can regenerate from chemical burns. Do his intuitions know if grots can regenerate from that sort of thing?)

Blacknail can do cooking, and seems very nervous that you expect all those other things that he does not know how to do. Blacknail knows the symbols for Gork and Mork, the symbol for “Any grots that come past this sign get smooshed”, and that the ‘umie shiny skull symbol usually means it’s good loot.

Eeberhim is not a very Orky name, he should maybe perhaps as a suggestion that this lowly grot definitely does not mean as telling him what to do, pick something more scary so other orks take him more seriously. Descriptive names like deff chompa, or teef gnasher are good. There’s more soundy and less wordy names like gazkull and grishnak that don’t have any meaning to em, but it also feels right to have names like that. They sound appropriately killy and ‘ard.

If its cloth that’s lying around and not like… in a pile that is being watched over, then its probably fine to steal? even for a grot like blacknail that would be safe. A big ork like Ibrahim can take probably more from weaker orks before they decide that they need to defend their stuff.

Water just lying around is a legend for those who have been on a planet before, very old orks talk of water puddles. Meks have water for mek stuff but they wont let anyone have any. But if youz iz thirsty there’s juicy shrooms you can squeeze for shroom juice, and juice squigs you can also squeeze for juice, but only a little bit of squeezing or they die and you get blood instead. 

Blacknail is reluctant to talk about the squig he was herding, but it’s a bad idea to lie to orks in krumping range, especially if you are now that orks minion.

It’s a squig, squigs can’t talk, only madboyz think squigs can talk. This one is good for food. Maybe it’s got some bones good for decoration or sticking through things. Blacknail has been fattening this one up for ages in secret. It’s not ready yet, but once it was ready he was going to eat the whole thing and either have a week long food coma or die because his stomach couldn’t take it, and either outcome would be okay with him. He would have eaten more than any grot ever did maybe. It’s been hard growing this squig without it getting snatched by any other grots or orks. 

The squig is several times the grots body weight, the bodies instincts say even the incredible digestive prowess of orkoid stomachs, something grots also share, wouldn’t be able to handle that much food.

Instincts vaguely feel grots regenerate about as fast as orks, but they die way easier, what with the being puny and small. The Instincts are sure that anything weaker than weapons grade acid would not get very far into thick ork skin. Orks are the best and most resilient thing, you are the best, go show your superiority by krumping something. These instinctual urges are not very hard to ignore if you have something better to do than krump someone, but the instincts do want a display of orkish dominance sometime soon.

Yeah, yeah, he's going to go have a proper spar soon, sparring is good if you have the strength for it and he'd really like to get a feel for using this body in a fight.

"I expect you to learn the things you don't know how to do. The idea is that I show you how to do them, and then you try to do them, and I tell you where you did it wrong, and you try it again, and repeat a bit, and then you know how to do them. This way, you'll be useful even once I'm tired of asking all these questions and I won't want to send you away to try your luck without me."

Ibrahim likes his name. It's the only thing he really has left. On some level, which he's not sure whether is his new instincts or his old ones, he feels that if the name 'Ibrahim' does not strike fear into the hearts of his enemies, he will simply have to be awesome enough to change that. But also, he may be strong but he's not the strongest, and he's going to be roped into some pretty stupid-sounding war, so. Blacknail doesn't get told any of this, Blacknail shouldn't see him look weak.

"If you eat that much squig, you will die. When it's ready, I'm going to want most of it, but you can have some as long as you're doing very good work for me. I'm going to go spar. If I tell people you're my grot and I'll hurt them if they mess with you, do you think they'll listen even when I'm busy sparring, since I'm pretty big for a new ork?"

Blacknail expected his squig to be eaten by the ork, thats just the way it is. But the disappointment on his face is so obvious that it’s like watching a child get told that the trip to disneyland is cancelled. He perks up a bit when he hears he can eat some of it at least, at least all his work raising it hasn’t gone to waste.

”If I iz your grot, and they punt me, they know youz gonna find and krump em after the spar anyway?” Defending your stuff is important, especially when that stuff was him!

"Great, thanks. You tell them that, if they're not smart enough to guess. Lead the way to the surface."

The little grot hides his secret squig in a hidden side tunnel, before leading Ibrahim to the surface. Despite his small size he is easily able to match pace with the long legs of an ork, though by the time they reach the surface Blacknail is visibly a little tired.

The most blinding thing about the surface is how close the stars look, whatever atmosphere there is here is thin enough and close enough to the surface that the brightness of the stars is utterly unimpeded. So many more stars are visible and are so much brighter without the atmosphere of earth dimming them or hiding them away.

Even without a nearby sun, the surface of the asteroid is decently lit by the starlight, at least to the eyes of an ork. It has a couple of built up areas with sheet metal buildings and smokestacks, the mek workshops perhaps, but most of what is visible is camps of shoddy looking leather tents. Ork boyz are lazing around being fed by their grots, or getting into brawls for fun. Some of the leader orks are easy to pick out, they wear full sets clothes like leather vests and pants and have shiny spiky decorations on their clothes or embedded into their skin, some even have mohawks or mustaches of tough looking hair, and carry nicer looking weapons. But most of the ork boyz around this area are almost as naked as Ibrahim, a loincloth or tattered vest, or fanny pack pouch, they are roughly around his size, and at best carry a bone club as a weapon.

Blacknail seems a little more nervous now there are lots of other beings around to threaten him. He is shiftily looking around for threats at all times, his large ears perking up at every sound, even his large pointy nose is sniffing around just in case.

Very reasonable and relatable! He shouldn't show that it's relatable, though.

He'll approach an ork his size who isn't already in a brawl or otherwise busy. "Wanna spar?"

The ork looks him up and down, naked, no scars, fresh spawn for sure. He breaks out into a grin, his teeth are all kinds of fucked up or broken and grow in jagged rows like shark. Nothing like the orderly set of fangs Ibrahim has.

” ‘Ere we go then! Bet ya is right outta ya pod then? And the first thing ya do is ask to spar, thas a good sign that is. We spar with proppa spar rules then fresh spawn, no eye or brain gouging, no shivs or other stabby bitz. Since youz new, I’ll let ya have some shroom brew if ya put up a good fight.” The idea of losing to a fresh spawn does not even enter the orks mind. He remembers being a fresh spawn, all brutal and no kunnin, a good ork needs to be both brutal and kunnin, this is how he knows he will win.

Well, it's not the first thing, but this guy doesn't need to know that. "Yeah, right out of the pod! I don't have stabby bits and I won't go for the eyes or brain. I have to know how I am at fighting, y'know?"

And he'll take a fighting stance, and … do spars involve counting and going on a count, or some other rules about starting? If not, he'll take a swing at More Mature Ork.

The other ork might no be any larger than this fresh spawn, but e’s ‘ad a scrap or two. He takes the hit on his chest and kicks out with a hard snap towards the fresh spawns knee. Fresh spawns never expect the kick. It’s usually all wild haymakers and biting when all you have is the feral instincts to guide you.

He's actually been in fights before! Mostly but entirely not with humanoids, but still. He has a lot of experience with situational awareness and dodging. If he has the spare capacity he'll try a simple feint.

Wot trickery is this! He waz going the other way! Other ork falls for it completely. 

And can he leverage this kind of thing into taking his opponent down? …also he should be a bit less careful with his opponent, the rules here imply that causing a lot of bleeding or such is totally normal for a spar if you can manage.

Despite falling for (to what a human think is) a simple trick, this ork looks rather good at taking hits! That first hit barely phased him.

Ibrahims new ork body can punch a lot harder than human memories would prepare someone for, and he needs to pull punches less. The orkish instincts tell Ibrahim to put the whole strength of this powerful body into a hit to do anything that will keep this ork down. Being careful is un-orkish.

Ibrahim could either hit him real hard repeatedly in a weak point if he wants to take him down quick, instead of the long slogging match of back and forth hits the orkish instincts seem to expect from a playful spar, or if he has any experience with submission pins those would work too. Submissions work using leverage rather than just raw strength or stamina.

He's fine with a long slog if he expects it to be educational and he's not accumulating too much damage, but he'd rather dodge than be hit, and he's noticeably better at dodging than he is at hitting. He'll still be aiming for weak points, not something more complicated than that, he hasn't had a fight in this body before.

Both Ibrahim and the other ork seem be capable of taking lots of hits, the pain is muffled and the longer the fight goes on the better the adrenaline equivalent feels, like a runners high but tuned up.

The instincts tell him he is doing a good job hitting weakpoints, and that a lesser opponent would already be down. But this ork he is fighting is particularly stubborn and hardy. Each hit to a joint or solar plexus makes the enemy ork grunt in pain but he is smiling ferally the entire time. Even teeth get knocked of out the other orks face and it keeps going. Eventually the ork backs away and puts his hands up.

”Youz gonna win, I say we end this now. You iz too tricksy to land a proppa hit on, and ya wud ‘ave worn me down eventually. I don’t need to wait for a broken bone to know i’ve lost.” The other ork wipes some blood from one of the cuts on his face that was trickling into his eye, and licks it off the back of his hand idly. “You iz a tricksy bastard ain’t ya? Very Morky, very Kunnin. Smart for a fresh spawn.” The ork smiles with his jagged smile at Ibrahim. “Ye can ‘ave the teef ya knocked out of me, and if ya still want some fungus brew ya can.”

Obviously there are no hard feelings, this was good clean fun.

"I agree, we end this now." Do orks say "thank you"? He has the feeling they do not, but an honest compliment seems reasonable. "You are very tough! I am impressed."

He'll pick up the teeth, since these are trade goods.

"I've never had fungus brew! I want some so I can know if I like it."

The other ork grabs a leather sack full of something sloshy, even unopened it smells potently alcoholic. “Grog is the best thing other than fightin’ around ‘ere!” He passes over the sack to Ibrahim. “ ‘Ave a couple of swigs mate, ya earned em.”

…what do his instincts say about his alcohol tolerance? He really doesn't want to be impaired, but social conformity is important.

The instincts want to get shitfaced! And fight while shitfaced! But you'd need to drain the whole sack to get properly drunk. At least based on the smell.

The instincts seem to be giving very detailed info about whats in the sack just based on the smell, like a living chemical detector. About -specific amount- of -thing that gets you shitfaced-, and -smaller trace amounts- of -very mild poison from shrooms that makes tongue tingle- with the -majority amount- of -slightly dirty shroom juice-. The instincts don’t have words for these things, but the nose can pick out a surprising amount detail of what its smelling.

He'll have a bit. Not enough for any real cognitive change. …at some point he wants distilled alcohol as a material, probably, but "before acquiring literally any containers" is not the time to try to get started on this. Containerlessness is very bad.

"I think I dislike fungus brew. If you get more cunning tricks and want to try them with me, we can spar again later."

And he'll ask Blacknail if this is enough teeth to buy a bag and where he could buy a bag.

“The Boss is gonna ‘and out Choppas to boyz who do well in da pit soon, I already earned mine, Youz can earn one for sure. When ya get yours we can spar with Choppas!” The other ork seems delighted by the idea of introducing weapons into the mix. “I moight have moved camp by then, so ask around for Boner, Boner with da tough bones.”

Blacknail says he can probably find a bag for a few teef, but it’d be cheaper to buy a bag squig and dry it out into a hard container kind of bag if he doesn’t mind waiting. You can also treat a bag squig to make it more of a supple leather pouch, but he would have to wait even longer.

Blacknail used to run a side business making squig leather, but his supply of good bag squigs was nabbed by a Mek who wanted them for something,

Blacknail usually wouldn’t bother offering an option to an ork that involves patience, but Eberhim seems weirdly calm and smart for an ork.

So, that sounds like a great idea, but also, if he's going to acquire any more things, he really needs a bag. …maybe he could find scrap cloth, if that's around, and find or buy buy needle and thread, and he can sew a cloth bag and show Blacknail how sewing works? Does that seem likely to get a bag while maybe also saving some teeth for a bag squig?

Ibrahim could get multiple bag squigs for a single toof. When still alive they aren't worth that much. Cloth that is scrap and not something purchased or fairly claimed from weaker orks, is probably going to be too tattered or full of holes to keep all your gubbinz in it? Could use it for a bag strap maybe. Should Blacknail go roam around for scraps to pilfer? Blacknail can also go to the ‘drops’ for some hair squigs for thread if Ibrahim feels he should.

Alright. He does want multiple bags. He'll go shopping for bag squigs. He has use for both rigid containers and flexible pouches and while he is capable of foresight that doesn't mean he doesn't want resources now. His minion will probably be sent on errands involving carrying things at some point, so probably the worst of the lot of bag squigs should go to Blacknail, which is also a tidy performance incentive.

After that, he and Blacknail are going to go look for cloth straps to pilfer, because he has opinions about what makes scraps more or less usable which may not be fully obvious to Blacknail. Hair squig hair sounds dubious as a thread source but can be investigated. …he doesn't have a spindle, which isn't great. If he can buy some thread that'd maybe be wise. And he wants a needle with a little hole at the far side for putting thread through and some pins, which he also probably has to pay for.

Does anyone or anything interrupt this excursion?

Blacknail goes to another gretchin, and exchanges teef for goods. Live bag squigs obtained. Blacknail then proceeds to gleefully bash the live bag squigs against a nearby rock until their insides becomes liquified. This is followed by pouring out the internal organ slop, initially poured into Blacknails mouth for a snack, until he gets sick of skeleton shards in his mouth, then onto the ground. The sacks of skin without organs are the inflated and the lips tied shut, making skin balloons. Those will eventually dry into tough and hard containers to put things in, itll take about a day and half to dry. Softer leathery bags need way more time, and brains, lots of brains, to treat the leather, but you can treat a already hard bag into becoming a soft bag if you need to, just need to soak them longer.

Once they go hunting for cloth scraps, Blacknail ties the inflated bag squigs to a bit of string that he turns into a makeshift belt, so the inflated bag squigs wont get lost or stolen. Many bits of small cloth and string deemed too small or tattered to easily be turned into clothing big enough for an ork are acquired.

Blacknail goes to the ‘drops’ to find hair squigs. The drops turns out to be a great big hole filled with refuse, both biological waste and trash. Even to an Ork it smells incredibly foul. Blacknail seems used to it as he scales the sides of the pit picking out small scurrying things.

Blacknail comes back with little green reptilian bugs with large mouth pincers and a tiny body, with a stubby tail that ends with really really long hairs, about as long as Ibrahims big forearm. The grot explains you twist off the tails and thats what crafty types use as thread.

Many scraps which are too small for ork clothing are not too small for assembling into a bag or otherwise using! He'd ideally want a multi-strand thread longer than his forearm but he can, technically, work with this.

Blacknail gets told that searching the drops is also a useful skill Ibrahim values.

Now they're going to look for a needle with a hole at the blunt end. It can be bone or metal or some other rigid material. Bone is probably more common than metal here?

Also, who engineers all these squig types, and how often do squigs turn into scary ork-eating monsters? He'll ask his intuition before asking Blacknail.

Plenty of little bones that could be needle sized are laying around as waste. There is no metal lying around that is not part of some existing thing that someone would get mad at Ibrahim for breaking. There is very little metal in the tent camps at all. The ork instincts find this a little odd, strange that all the boyz around have no metal shiny bitz and live in shoddy tents and seem poor.

Asking around for already worked needles gets Ibhrahim weird looks, either because it’s odd for an ork to make clothing, or they worry this fresh spawn is a burgeoning painboy.

The Instincts don’t know where squigs come from. Squigs are just like that. But the ork eating monster squigs are born that way, hair squigs don't turn into bitey squigs. The instincts would find bitey monster squigs more fun though.

Yeah, all right, needle manufacture can happen. This is going to be tedious and he is going to delegate some of the tediousness to his minion. Maybe a mekboy can drill a hole for him or at least loan him some drilling tool if he uses it on-site the whole time, maybe he's going to have to go on a quest to assemble a primitive hand drill so that he can assemble scraps into a container when he still doesn't have any containers to put drill parts in, the idea of which gives him a sinking feeling that there's a metaphorical hole in his bucket. (Though at least in the song, they had most of a bucket!) Maybe thread can stay on the needle if he just gives it a bit of a notch or something, which should be easier than an eye?

But hey, there's food around. He's strong. He's not going to starve. Also, he doesn't have homework. Soonish he'll probably be drafted, but soonish isn't today. It's not the post-graduation rest he wanted, but.

Anyway, this is Blacknail's first chance to see Ibrahim's teaching style, which involves a lot of demonstrating the smallest possible step of a task, telling Blacknail to do it, correcting Blacknail, and repeating demonstrations and attempts as needed. He'll also physically move Blacknail's hands through the motions of a task during this if it seems necessary, which for some reason he's able to do without applying excessive force.

Blacknail will get praise for small bits of incremental progress, and remarks about the importance of being useful if he slacks.

Blacknail does his best, but he has a lot of trouble focusing on one thing for very long. He gets bored quickly and even with a big strong scary ork nearby he gets distracted easily. He does get better at it when he finds out failure is not met by being kicked, like would be the usual consequence. It’s easier to focus without having to spend time worrying about if you'll get hit.

Working bone is something Blacknail is used to, even if not exactly in this way. He tends to abandon tools and use his teeth or claws when that seems easier, gnawing away parts of bone instead of grinding them down.

Adding notches to bone needles is not that hard to figure out, or slowly grinding a eye hole into a bone needle using a slightly tougher tooth or sharp rock.

Once the bag squigs become dry you can just pull open the dried animals mouth and you have a container ready to go, but Blacknail understands hating to wait for things to happen. Waiting is almost as bad as getting punted! 

Ibrahim is a weird ork, doesn’t yell at him or hit him, but that makes being his minion a pretty great deal, even if fiddly bone working was boring.

Failure is normal. Failure is not met by being kicked. If he tries something with Ibrahim's materials without his permission, that will get him kicked, but failure will not.

Lapses in focus, however, will get remarks about how useless people have short lifespans and if he's not useful he won't have anyone to protect him and then he'll get eaten. Ibrahim won't eat him if he follows Ibrahim's instructions, if he follows Ibrahim's instructions but turns out to be useless Ibrahim will just send him away, but if he isn't useful to someone he's probably going to die. These remarks can get escalatingly graphic if necessary, Ibrahim's heard a lot of them.

Once Blacknail gets the hang of things, Ibrahim is going to do some exercises while he waits, though he has to stop himself from optimizing for suffering and mana-building.

And eventually they have some needles, and they're going to look for a mekboy with a drill. …also, what's Blacknail's sleep cycle normally like?

Blacknail shrugs. He can stay awake for a really long time if he has to. He has a while before he feels like he would want to nap, and he doubts he will be allowed to nap as much as he wants to. Theres no sun to keep time here. He usually naps every 6 hours-ish?*

Ibrahims instincts feel like he also would probably want to nap in another 4 or 5 hours? Not sleep for long though, just a nap. This body has tons of time left before it needs a long sleep.

A Mek boy would probably be found in the big sheet metal buildings with smoke coming out of the seams between the metal sheets.

*(Time units given in orkish, wich is very imprecise about time, 6 hours is just roughly what Ibrahim’s instincts tell him that means)

Eventually he's going to discreetly ask the gretchin-training specialist how much sleep they need. And then be stuck discounting that, because it probably isn't actually optimal for long-term productivity and capacity to respond to emergencies.

Ooh, metal buildings with smoke! Technology! Technology is great. What metal do the sheets look like? If they've got modern-looking steel that's a good sign. But that's tangential, he'll look for an entryway and head in. Unless there's some kind of stupid "you have to be strong enough to bend the metal to let yourself in" thing going on, which he can't rule out and will be stuck going along with if it's the case.

It looks like old timey steel used for rail lines or old rebar, not the stainless kind, it has a lot of discoloured streaks going through it though. The sheets are visibly hammered flat rather than casted or pressed that way. Theres a gate! But there is a suspicious power coil looking thing above the gate that glows blue sometimes. A few feet away from the gate is a big copper metal sheet hanging off a post by some hinges, its covered in dents. Looks like its been banged on.

Blacknail points at it. “Gotta bang it so he knows youz here.”

Ooh, electricity. Electricity is good. Electrified gates, which seem to be the implication here, are not the most convenient, but still.

He'll bang on the gong.