When Krug was a young ork, a runtherd took him into Mek City to see the Goff Parade. He said, "Krug, when you grow up, will you be a really fighty Goff boy, a killer of our foes?"
Krug said, "Yeah course."
"Good lad."
'Parade' was doing some heavy lifting, as words go. Mostly it was a bunch of Stormboy yoofs marching down the road in lines in their silly polished boots, with onlooking orks lobbing stuff at them to see how distractible they were. But the best bit of the whole thing, as far as young Krug was concerned, was the energy of so many orks in one place. He'd come out of the ground way out beyond Vulcha Cliffs. There weren't a whole lot of ladz out that way. Being here, in the city, filled him with something. Something that needed to get out.
And it did.
Legend has it that Krug spontaneously vomited so much green energy out of his mouth that it torched a whole mob of Stormboyz, which inevitably prompted their mates to come over with the intention of stomping his head flat. Recognising a powerful weapon, a nearby Boss, Narbluff, suggested the crowd have a scrap with the Stormboyz and show them no amount of boot polish helps you win. In the chaos, Narbluff and Roobin the Runtherd hauled Krug to safety.
"You is a weirdboy," Roobin said, poking Krug in the chest.
"Good one too," Narbluff rumbled.
Krug shrugged. "Does that mean I get summink?" he asked, innocently. He was right, in a way. He got two burly minders and a non-voluntary tenancy in a small hut on a pole.
"Why is I up here, Roobin?" Krug asked one day, when Roobin brought him something to eat.
"Boss Narbluff says you is dangerous, so we keeps you safe until it's time for a scrap."
"I like scraps," Krug agreed, "But I is bored and lonely. I wish you'd never brought me to Mek City. I wish I'd never known what it feels like to be among da ladz."
"So say all ladz who come to see such huts, but it is not for them to decide wevver to be in dem," Roobin said, patting him on the shoulder.
"Dat's shit."
Roobin shrugged, a little guilt creasing his old, scarred features. "I'll see wot I can do," he said rather noncommittally.
The next day, Roobin climbed back up the copper ladder to Krug's hut, grunting with the effort of climbing one-handed.
"What's dat?" Krug asked as Roobin dumped a sack on the hut floor in front of him. Something inside the sack kicked.
"Da boss sez you can't leave, but I've brought you summink to do," Roobin said. He pulled out a long thin bit of wood with wires stuck to it in lines. "Dis, my lad, is a gittar."
"What's a gittar?"
"And dis is a squigamp," he said, producing a furious little red squig with a metal grille in its mouth. "You can use dem to make rokk. Takes a while to learn though," he added, grabbing the squigamp by the tail and plugging the gittar into it. "Plus the squig's good for petting or slapping if you is feeling down."
The shape of the gittar was intuitive enough, Krug thought. Strangle its neck, tickle its belly. As one of his horn-like nails caught the wires, it made a sound. A pretty dread sound, actually. He did it again.
"Have fun," Roobin said.
"How does I feed the squig?" Krug asked.
"Oh its got food behind da speaker. Should last you a week or so. If you like da gittar we'll get you a normal amp after dat, dis one was kind of a joke present. Look at da poor little git!" Roobin said with a laugh. The squigamp furiously but ineffectually attempted to charge Roobin, but moved so slowly under the weight of the amp in its mouth that it half-crawled half-slithered, like a beached sea creature, without achieving much of anything.
"Cheers Roobin," Krug said.
By the time the sun went down, Krug had learned that if you strangled the gittar in different places on its neck, it made different noises, as did plucking at the various metal string-wire-things. Higher pitched noises, lower pitched noises, long and short noises, wails, screeches and reverberations. Krug found some of them sounded pretty satisfying if he played them in a particular order while tapping his feet at a steady pace. Sometimes it felt good to repeatedly play the same four noises in rapid succession, then do a twiddly bit, then back to the same four noises.
Roobin came back the next day. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Someone been up here showing you tricks?" he asked when he got up to the hut. Krug was playing away, and didn't notice that Roobin had even come in. "Krug?" Oi Krug!" Roobin said, nudging him.
There was a discordant twang, and Krug stopped scrunching his eyes shut and pursing his lips like he'd stubbed his toe. "Ello Roobin."
"You has a gift."
"I know, you gave it me yesterday."
"I'd best talk to the boss," Roobin said.
But the boss wasn't interested. Mob-slaying weirdboys were hard to find, and he had no interest in risking that by indulging Krug's innate gittar skills with more orks nearby. He could get excited. Maybe blow his own head off with too much energy from a crowd.
Then one day, when Krug felt he was happy enough with the gittar playing he'd already tried, and now wanting to learn new things, he tried fiddling with the buttons on the now rather sickly and feeble squigamp. He found the volume control.
It is a rare ork that does not hold firm to the belief that louder is better, so naturally once Krug found this dial, he cranked it up to maximum, much to the squig's displeasure. And as he played, the music felt natural, and flowed well, and he heard that it was good. He could almost hear Mek City, hear the jumbled roar of hordes of orks fighting and laughing and eating and building and drinking and dying and living and shitting and roaring, one huge crowd, until the end of everything, all existing to one primordial beat echoing into past and future, eternal but ever changing, together and divided, brutal and cunning. Krug's fingers switched to a pinched harmonic as his improvisation built to a climax, face pinched in ever more contorted ways, finally ending on one long sustained note that wavered and died away like a receding tide.
"Play anuvver!" came a voice from outside.
"Yeah! More! MORE!" came other voices.
Krug opened his eyes to discover that he was, in fact, currently hovering. Since this came as a surprise, he immediately stopped hovering and landed on his arse with a bang. He poked his head out of the hut. Lots of orks were outside, all looking up at the hut, grinning and shouting. "Ello," Krug said.
"You shreds epic!" shouted one of the orks. Krug sort of intuitively knew what this meant, despite not having heard the verb to shred before. So he played again, and he imagined Mek City, its many lights and ladz. Once more he strangled and tickled his gittar, and the ladz cheered, and through the power of music Krug felt transported beyond the oppressive situation foisted upon him.
This transportation turned out to be quite literal, and was accompanied by a bright green flash and a thunderclap like the applause of Gork and Mork themselves.
Krug landed on his arse again, but this time, he was in Mek City, surrounded by the equally disoriented ladz who'd clustered around his hut. Half of them looked like their faces were melting. This was definitely a bit weird, but Krug was so happy to be back in Mek City, and so immediately full of energy, that the only way to release it was to keep playing.
Those orks who still had faces started cheering him on: "Shred! Shred! Shred! Shred!"
From that day forth, he would never truly stop, even when asleep. His beloved first gittar eventually rattled to kindling, and his original squigamp exploded from a particularly vicious pinched harmonic, but Shred went wherever there were ladz and rok to be found, and for the hardcore few brave enough to stand near the awesome power of a face-melting solo, they could travel with him, wherever that might be.
Years later old Roobin would still say, with a tear in his eye, "Just fink if I'd never thought to give that git a loud squig, what da galaxy would've missed."
* * *
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| Shred's current gittar is made of wurrbone to tie into a previous extremely stupid post, so I painted the chips in a pale bone colour. |
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| The painting's done using my usual Goff recipe, although I paid a little more attention to the skin and a few other details, like his mic. |
All of which is to say: I painted the Goff Rokker and now use him as a Weirdboy. Cheers folks!
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