Even genius ideas have limits, and my Grot project was stretching things. The idea of getting all my Orks an assistant Grot was not a new one, I’d had it ever since I first won by Mob, seeing as how useful Grikkle had turned out to be. But Orks will be Orks, and they had little care for Grots, save those they kept as pets. To let the Grots serve as something more, to really shine, would mean a serious change in the Ork’s mindsets, something almost impossible given, well, the lack of any real mind to speak of. But there are ways around most problems, and the unique quirks of the Stormboyz would prove the linchpin to my strategy.
With the changes to the Grot Gauntlet, there was suddenly a large incentive to get a pet Grot. That would be my way in. With the game, the Orks would become invested in their Grots, wanting the biggest and strongest. Then, I would unveil the next part of my plan. Gunz for Grotz, Buy One, Get One Free! But that was for another day. The Orks needed time to adjust, too much change too quickly would just confuse them.
Meanwhile, there was plenty of work to be done. I needed to overhaul my Mobz trash weapons and Rokkets, expand my workshop, improve my Grot assistants mechanical and engineering skills, create some vehicles to carry my Mobz and machines, improve the organization of my Grots, research just how far I could push my science-tek hybrids, and do some tinkering with that plasma pistol I got from that one git… ahhh, what was his name? Bah, who cares.
But most importantly, it was time to put my Mob to the test. To weed out the weak, and solidify my position as boss. Already, my Grotz were making reports on some discontent amongst the Boyz, though that was almost inevitable without a full blown war going on to keep them entertained. Still, it was something that needed taking care of. And I needed some action, dammit!
But I wasn’t going to just go off into a fight without being prepared. So I did my research. I sent my Grots to investigate the nearby band of Speed Freakz, who my Boyz had raided previously. If they had beaten them once, they could do it again. I would put their vehicles to good use, after plenty of refurbishment.
Meanwhile, I needed to gear up. My suit was still in ruins, and I really wanted to play- I mean, experiment with my plasma pistol. For science. Yes….
*Ten minutes later*
Bored. Booooooooooooooored. I glared down at my workbench, exasperated at how little progress I was making. Atop the cluttered table was the disassembled corpse of my plasma pistol. Rather than finding the experimenting exciting, scientific testing was as dull as standardized testing. This wasn’t making a weapon, which turned off my Orky side, and it wasn’t easy, which turned off my human side. Unfortunately for science, I just couldn’t bring myself to give a fuck, once the pieces were laid out in front of me, this time literally.
But I couldn’t stop. That would set a dangerous precedent to my slowly shaping gestalt consciousness. So I changed the goal of my experiments. I was going to improve the gun. And if I had to learn how it worked in order to do that, well, then it couldn’t be helped.
Somehow, that small change in mindset did wonders for me, and where I had previously found examining the weapon’s carcass as boring as watching paint dry, I now found it tantalizingly exciting, akin to dissecting a dead battery, only a hundred times more dangerous. Looking at a plasma reactor and magnetic containment field is easy. Modifying it? Explosively dangerous.
Despite my changed mindset, most of the, for lack of a better term, mechanics of the weapon eluded me, both Ork and Human alike, something almost entirely new. No matter how much I poked Orky me, he just couldn’t explain how portions of the weapon worked, nor how to reproduce them.
Odd. I thought back to my experience, though somewhat limited, in learning the craft of the Mek. And remembered the inspiration for it all. A brief battle, followed by brilliant insight. And my other rapid advancements in knowledge seemed to come after other fights, like the one to take over the Stormboy Mob. Huh, fitting. Orks grow stronger from fighting, so why can’t Meks grow smarter from the same thing? It was all about rewarding those who succeeded in prosecuting war. Orks were bio-engineered to fight a war after all, so why waste resources on the ineffective or lazy, when you can hard-wire their power-ups directly to how well they wage war? A no-brainer.
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What wasn’t a no-brainer was how exactly to upgrade my gun. And I needed to do that, or I’d lose interest, and some self-respect. Can’t not do what I set out to do, after all. Not if I wanted to keep some semblance of my human drive to improve, as small as it might be. Anything was better than the laziness of most Orks. Sure, they were incredibly productive when it came to preparing and waging war, but they quickly lost interest if said preparations didn’t yield immediate results. That was part of the reason raids on fellow Mobz was allowed, though total destruction of either side was heavily punished. Gotta have something to test your new guns on, after all, or what’s the point?
With the need for upgrades at the foremost of my efforts, I did my best to use both parts of my psyche to improve what little I did understand. I replaced some of the magnets with my own, increasing power and fixing a few leaky parts where plasma would slowly escape from its containment. Then I added redundant power via batteries to avoid the chance of a temporary shutdown of the containment field to cause the weapon to explode in my hand when overused.
Next, I had my Grots go and trade some of my premier, high-end Grot weaponry ( Uses 100% Science! ) to Hedsnagga’s crew, in exchange for a few of his failed or discarded projects involving power sources and energy weapons. Those provided very little insight, but Orky me understood individual parts somewhat better than how they all fit together, so I was able to mix and match some pieces.
In the end, there really weren’t many individual parts to improve upon, but there was a way to up-gun things, so to speak. Previously, the gun had three separate sections. A power source to superheat ferrous metals, like steel and iron, into plasma. A magnetic container for said plasma, to keep it from losing too much energy and slowly building up the amount of plasma. And a launcher, which used more magnets to send the plasma out of the weapon.
There were also some super shiny gubbinz that I couldn’t quite figure out, which served as the biggest hurdle to a real overhaul, as any change to the design had to keep said gubbinz in the exact same position and with the same amount and flow of power, lest they fail for some arcane reason, and make the gun go boom, and not in the good way. This would be almost impossible if I planned on keeping the gun at the same size, but why settle with a pistol, when you can have a machine-gun?
It took nearly sixteen hours ( not including lunch breaks, requests for new, shiny gunz, and a quick joy ride ) to build the more advanced parts, as well as fit it all together, keeping so much of the original design while quintupling its size, but I managed. In the end, the pistol was more of a fuck-off cannon than anything else, taking up the entire arm of my hastily repaired power armor ( Did I mention that? Bah, boring details. ). In total, I added three new power generators to speed up plasma production, doubled the size of the magnetic containment field and thus its total ammo capacity, and increased the muzzle velocity of the plasma projectiles by nearly seven times, thanks to my previous expertise in magnetically accelerated weaponry. I also tripled the thickness of its protective frame, reducing its recoil, and making it harder for enemy fire to cause the important bits any damage.
The results, however, were… mixed. Where previously the pistol’s single shot had turned a full ten-man squad of Ork Stormboyz to meat paste, for some reason each shot now barely killed one, with the rest receiving only minor injuries. Guesstimates showed the explosion factor was down nearly 85%!
How the weapon had lost power, well, I had my theories. It likely had to do with the Waaagh! energy field, and the fact that I had turned the fire rate up to eleven, able to hold down the trigger and practically hose down the firing range for eight full seconds before running out of plasma. The Waaagh! energy field had only so much power, and keeping the gun from exploding while unleashing so much firepower was likely sucking up most of its reserves. Aaaand my retrofits probably made that even more difficult, given my lesser skill compared to its maker. Hey, I'm a big Ork, I can admit when I'm not as good as someone else. Yet.
On the bright-side, the firepower had definitely improved, if not the efficiency. Firing at full-auto, even with reduced damage per shot, was a huge upgrade. Semi-auto is for pussies, give me a machine-gun any day. And the ammo was as simple as loading scrap iron or steel into a hamper, filtering the contents with even MOAR magnets, and melting the remains down into a ball of plasma. Easy-peasy.
But that was as far as I could go. I was done. Exhausted. Bored out of my fucking mind. Even blasting the entire firing range until nothing but craters and ash remained, and the entire Mob was all around me, howling and roaring in excitement, even that barely stirred any excitement in me. I needed to kill something. A lot of somethings. And now I had a real gun. Time to go stir up some trouble.