Snakebites

The Snakebites are an Ork clan of the Feral Ork tradition, distrustful of advanced technology and marked by their venomous rites of initiation. Among Orks, a clan is less a nation than a shared temperament, and the Snakebites rely on war paint, hand weapons and massed boar cavalry rather than forcefields, vehicles or elaborate gunsmithing. Their name and totem, a venomous serpent, come from a coming-of-age rite in which a young Ork provokes a poisonous snake into biting him and sucks out the venom to prove his endurance; repeated exposure of this kind is recorded as leaving Snakebites with a marked resistance to natural poisons.

No fixed homeworld is recorded for the Snakebites, consistent with their character as a wandering clan that rarely holds a world for long. Individual Snakebites are said never to travel without a venomous creature kept close at hand, in case local fauna proves disappointingly mild. Runtherdz and Weirdboyz hold unusually high standing within the clan, reflecting the Snakebites’ skill at breeding Gretchin and Squigs, while Meks and Painboyz remain comparatively few. Only Snakebites breeders are credited with the knowledge to raise the immense Squiggoth, which spearheads, alongside mobs of Gretchin, the clan’s preferred tactic of a fast, close-quarters assault. A later current within the clan, the Beast Snagga tradition of hunting larger prey, is recorded as especially strong among the Snakebites, whose few machines favour crude, steam-driven engines over standard Ork war-gear.

The clearest attested Snakebites campaign is the WAAAGH! led by Warboss Hruk Teefsplinta in 855.M41, which began when Teefsplinta enslaved the population of the Corva binary system to build a fleet large enough for his menagerie, then overran the nine Shrine Worlds of Marlisanct, turning the system’s Basilica Imperator Majoris into a Squiggoth breeding pen. Separately, a Snakebites tribe known as the Wyrm-Killa rode with WAAAGH! Bork out of the Ghoul Stars into the Eastern Fringe, taking its name after surviving an infestation of Tyranid organisms aboard an Ork kill kroozer, and is recorded as having later released surviving specimens on conquered worlds to provide sport for other Orks.

Named Snakebites recorded across these and other WAAAGHs include Hruk Teefsplinta, Ogrokk Bitespider, Tuskagrob Wurldkilla, Mozrog Skragbad, Bogrot Bones, Grudbolg, Zzipp Funda and a warlord known as Da Viper, though no connected history links them. Imperial scholars have speculated that the Snakebites preserve something close to the original Ork kultur predating contact with the wider galaxy, consistent with their continued preference for boar, spear and venom over engine and gun.