Entry 1
Transcribed by his goblin scribe, Ian H. McKinley
It’s a heavy burden but I bear it. It’s a weight on my shoulders but also a beast that pursues me. It’s an elixir that gives me energy and a codpiece that restrains me.
Thus it is to be Gorn N’hleg.
You see, I’m no ordinary Orc. I’m literate, for one thing. I mean, I can’t actually scratch parchment with a cockatrice feather dipped in the blood of my enemies or anything, but bringing in a slave as a scribe was certainly not beyond my means or aspirations. And I figured out that you can’t keep ’em as slaves or what you write down isn’t what you wanted written down. I learnt that the hard way when my anthology of battlefield poetry was deliberately transcribed as a recipe for flatulent apple tarts. I throttled that little fecker and moved on.
I keep two scribes now and I keep ’em well. Yup, these be the best kept Goblins in Towne. Feather beds, drink, nosh, a good bit of gratuitous violence, a gang of mates to partake in the violence with ’em. Yup. They be well-kept. But I also keep ’em apart. You see, Goblins be scheming little shits at the best of times. Goblin scribes are worse. You let ’em interact and they can’t help but work out how they’ll skew your literature in advance. So I keep ’em separate. Then I get one of ’em to do the cockatrice feather scratching and the other to read it all back to me. That way I know they isn’t tricking me.
I’m also a good Blood Bowl coach. And that’s another reason I’m no ordinary Orc. I was hired on as the inaugural head coach of the ROUGE et Ork of the prestigious Kasse Gueule league … I think that translates into Smash Face … and took them straight to a championship. With different ownership groups moving the team around, I’ve had to rebuild them, but I’ve always made ’em competitive and hard. Most recently I took them to the final of the Thrunk Memorial Brick.
But along came a new challenge and … my scribes inform me I have to use the word “hence” now … hence this missive, the first of its kind but not that last. More on that later. Anyway, the new challenge: Black Orcs.
You see, I got filled with rage at the owners’ repeated refusal to allow me to build a team the Ultras – the die-hard fans – wanted to see play. The Ultras are the heart of an Orc team and don’t let anybody tell you different. They rob hard-earned silver off hard-working victims and they don’t get a lot. That they choose to spend some of their loot on supporting a Blood Bowl team means that team better deserve their fanatical devotion. Do they want to see some prissy Blitzer throwing a ball at the ground and shaking his ass at the end of some field, or, do they want to see blood and spittle flying from the faces of their team’s opponents?
The owners of the ROUGE et Ork never figured it out, but I did, long ago. So, when one of the better Boyz on my team came along and said they was unhappy, I thought: here’s an opportunity. I mustered my own gold and got a few loyal ladz in to help provide more gold, and bam! – I’ve got a new style of Orc team!
I hired-on some of the better Boyz. Usually Black Orcs is good but not great. They grew up in their tribes so used to bossing the weaklings around that they never had to develop technique. But the core of the ROUGE et Ork had some decent Black Orcs who’d come a long way in training. They already knew throttling the opponents is good, but they figured out that you don’t have to put ’em down where you picked ’em up by their scrawny necks. You can shift ’em to where it’s easier for other Boyz to get stuck in. Also, when the opponents try and pull you down with ’em, technique helps you push their faces into the turf.
But hiring players like Killie Jefferz’n, Charlz’t’n Huuuz, and Slag Killdwarf don’t come cheap. So you gotta cut corners. Even if I jacked up the number of Black Orcs from four to six, I had to make tough decisions elsewhere.
That’s where Konvisse Yeux comes in. He’s a nasty, sneaky, vicious little git who lives to put the boot in … especially on opponents who happen to find themselves on the ground. I love the little toad.
Anyway, he proposes forgetting the ass-wagging Blitzers and filling out the line-up with his mates. Goblins!
Brilliant!
Ladies and gentleorcs, I bring you: The Bytown Maulers
The idea for the new team was so interesting, I then got contacted by a legend in the game, Taureau Amiral. Yeah, him. The philosopher Minotaur. I’ve recently had his Art of Coaching read to me by those scribes I talked about and I even understood some of it. Anyway, I have to acknowledge his mastery of the sport (it’s in my contract) and when he asked me to make a chronicle of my “personal and professional voyage” (whatever the hells that means) in coaching my Black Orcs, how could I refuse?
So this is it. The back story. The next entry’ll be about how I built the team and their early success.