Bad Moons

The Bad Moons are an Ork clan renowned among Orks as the wealthiest and most ostentatiously well-armed of all the greenskin clans. Like all Ork clans they are a xenos grouping within the wider Ork species, loosely bound within the anarchic, war-driven society that periodically erupts into a Waaagh! (a mass Ork war-horde), rather than a state with fixed borders or a standing command structure. Among Orks, wealth is measured in teef — the teeth of Orks, which regrow throughout life and are harvested, traded and gambled as currency — and the teef of Bad Moons Orks are recorded as growing faster than those of any other clan, making the Bad Moons collectively the richest Orks in the galaxy.

No fixed homeworld or holding is attested for the Bad Moons; as with other Ork clans, the clan’s following moves from conflict to conflict rather than being tied to a single world, gathering wherever fighting, trade and plunder are to be found. Within Ork society the clan functions as something close to a merchant caste, forever buying, selling and haggling for teef, and spending its wealth on the best gear it can obtain. Because a rich Ork is an obvious target — other Orks reason that a Bad Moon can simply be beaten and relieved of his teef — the clan spends heavily on protection, fielding Warbosses and Nobz equipped with kustom weapons, elaborate mega armour and heavily armoured Battlewagons. Bad Moons mobs also keep an unusually large number of Gretchin slaves, who are sent into close combat while the Orks themselves hang back and shoot.

In battle the Bad Moons favour firepower over the close-quarters brawling prized by many other clans, trading blows at range with expensive, kustomised guns rather than closing to the choppa. Their signature mobs are the Flash Gitz, Bad Moons Orks who have amassed enough teef to indulge an addiction to loud, elaborately kustomised Snazzguns, and who are recorded among Orks as among the most arrogant and mercenary of an already self-regarding type. The clan’s Warbosses and Big Meks are known for gear built to display wealth as much as to kill, from gold-plated Deffgunz to towering totems of Gork and Mork raised from looted precious metal. Warbosses named within Bad Moons history include Nazdreg Ug Urdgrub and Ozdakka, the latter styled the Boss of Bosses of the clan, alongside lesser-recorded figures such as Gargaz Teefgrabba and Tragfang.

The clan is identified by heraldry of golden yellow and black, marked with the crescent moon and black flame that give the Bad Moons their name and signal their wealth from a distance. Bad Moons mobs are also noted for producing an unusually high number of Weirdboyz, Orks whose crude psychic power the clan prizes, in keeping with a wider reputation among Orks for hoarding knowledge as avidly as they hoard teef. As with all Ork clans, the Bad Moons persist wherever Orks make war, their standing resting less on any single recorded victory than on a continuing reputation, among rival and ally alike, for being the best-armed and best-supplied greenskins in any fight.