Part 1 A DeathSkullz Tank
BigMek Cutty plunked the last rivet in place and took a step back to admire his work. He circled the little tank appraising it from top to bottom. It was just a bunch of leftover scrap that he had assembled in his usual style. He would pick up one bit that caught his eye, maybe a tread or a plate of armor, then affix some other bit and continue in that fashion until he figured it was finished.

The treads and the main part of the carriage for this creation had come from some ‘oomie tank. Cutty then added a great big rokkit turret from an ‘oomie emplacement, wired in the controls and got all the mechanisms working together. Then he sealed up the sides with armor plating.

Fortunately, this tank had a hatch so that a driver could get in and some little stairs leading up to it (that was Weezul’s idea). It was not uncommon for him to completely seal up one of his creations in armor and have to cut a door later after its absence and necessity had been pointed out to him.

Suddenly it dawned on him that no ork (not even a yoof) could make it through the hatch, much less fit inside. His faithful gretchin minder was busily cleaning and oiling his twin flechette blasters at a nearby workbench.

“Oi, Weezul, wanna drive dis fing?”
“Nah boss, how’m I gonna keep an eye on you if I’m sealed up in a tin can?”
“Oh, right. Fink one uv da uvver grotz wants to?”
“I’m sure I can scare someone up.”
“All right, give it some blue paint fer luck, and so everyone knows it’s a Skullz tank then.”

Cutty had already lost interest and wandered over to a nearby scrap pile to look for his next bit of inspiration.

Part 2 The Bad Moonz Tank
Weezul found a willing driver for the tank all right, the grot that everyone just called Runt because he was barely even gretchin-sized. More of a snotling really, but he could speak and think like a gretchin and was the only one in camp small enough to fit comfortably in the driver’s seat of Cutty’s tank. The tank was almost all engine and the working gubbinz of the turret and there was barely enough room left for both Runt and the controls to drive the thing.

Runt however, was delighted. His entire life he had been belittled and forced by the other gretchin in camp to do the tasks that no one else wanted to do. Now he had a tank!
The first thing he did after firing it up was to run over his two least favorite gretchin rivals who were too oblivious arguing over a bit of scrap to even see him coming. Weezul saw that both the machine and the driver he found for it were obviously up to the task of killing things and considered it a job well done.

What he hadn’t considered was that word of a tank built just for a gretchin would spread like wildfire amongst the other grots in camp. A few days after the original grot tank left the workshop, he was paid a visit by Yella, a pompous, conniving little git who got his sense of self-importance from the fact that he served as ammo runt for a huge Bad Moonz nob named GoldMaw da Butcha.

Yella snuck up behind Weezul while he was focused on watching Cutty do his work.
“Oi, Weezul!”
Weezul nearly jumped out of his skin, that voice when unexpected was like getting shivved in the liver. He knew who was addressing him before he even turned around.
“‘Ello Yella, what do you want?”
“I wants a tank. A grot tank! And tell Cutty not like that hunka junk he made fer Runt. I wants a proppa orky killin’ machine wotz fit fer a proppa Bad Moon ork like myself.”
“You ain’t an ork Yella, you’ze a grot just like Runt is. You got da teef fer a tank?”
Yella’s lips curled into a snarl at the insult but he knew that he had the advantage in this bargain.
“‘Course we gotz da teef, we’z Bad Moonz, ain’t we? But since you’ze in an insulting mood, Cutty’s gonna make dis tank fer us fer free, and I’m keeping da teef.”
“Wot? Nobody gets nothing outta this workshop fer free Yella. Unless you’ze a Skull that is.”
“Is that so? You want da Butcha coming down ‘ere and asking fer it in person?”

Weezul bristled. Cutty wouldn’t put up with another ork trying to bully his way into a free tank and might even be able to take on da Butcha in a fight, but that’s not at all how it would go down and he knew it. Instead, da Butcha would come and bully Weezul, and Cutty would be too lost in his work to notice.

“Calm down, Yella, we’ll make yer tank then.”
“That’s right you will. And proppa too, I wants it big and killy, wiv twice da rokkitz you lot put on Runt’s tank!”
Yella puffed up his chest, turned on his heel and left.
“Dat git’s gonna git it one of these days,” thought Weezul, “and I’m gonna be the one to give it to him”. He just had to figure out a way to do it without any of the Bad Moonz knowing it was him.

Part 3 The Evil Sunz Make a Tank Too
BigMek WarpRokka set down his paintbrush and took a step back to admire his work. He circled the little tank appraising it from top to bottom. It looked dead fast, and dead killy, too, wot wiv da rokkits up top that he had pulled off the suit of one of those curious blue fellas. His last trukk had been on the wrong side of some of their rokkits so he knew they were the bizness. And then there was the paintjob…

Rokka became a BigMek amongst the Sunz clan not just for his know-wotz of vehicles and forcefields and such, but also because he was da fastest racer and da toughest in a brawl for decades. These days though, he spent most of his time in his workshop.

If you needed a tune-up, or a real flash paint job with extra flames and some pin-stripey bitz, Rokka was unrivaled. Sure he had taken up the DeathSkullz blue once ol’ Gulgog had become Warlord back on Gork’un, but he wore it over his trusty Sunz red coveralls. If you was a Sun the day before a race, you could count on Rokka to have saved some of his extra-speshul Sunz red paint for your ride to make sure that the Sunz lads came out on top.

He also increasingly spent his evenings around the campfires drinking and listening to the ramblings of the runtherdz as they tried to instill the camp with propper orky knowledge and kultur. Any Sunz runtherd worth his hair squig would inevitably get around to the tale of why Sunz vehicles were all red, on account of the sacrifices made to the dying sun of the original ork homeworld.

Rokka had started out his paint job on the tank by just coating the whole thing in red. The tank itself had started out as a bit of one-upmanship. If those other mek gitz could make a tank for their grotz (which admittedly, was a ridiculous, and un-orky thing to do), he could make one too, and it’d darn sure be fasta than the rest. He had to paint all of the rokkits red too so that their target would have a harder time dodging out of the way.

The rokkit launcha though was already a bright orange, which worked out okay, and he could always just paint it red too, but that runtherd yarn about the dying sun was rattling around in his head and he couldn’t seem to shake it. Something about it fading despite all the efforts and sacrifices of the original orks had grabbed a hold of his psyche. So he started blending the red slowly up to the orange, and now…

There was a low whistle behind him.
Startled, Rokka spun around. Sitting atop a pile of scrap was Likkle Spanna, his faithful grot assistant. There had been plenty of times that Rokka had wished he could whistle; it was an appropriate response for a flash new ride, or a race well won but he never got the hang of it. Grotz had a way of learning useful tricks like whistling which is why you had to cuff ‘em every now and then to remind them who really ran things.

“Yeah, whoddya think?”
“It looks dead fast boss.”
“‘Course it does, I built it, and it’s got my speshul red on it.”
“Looks dead killy, too, wot wiv da rokkits up top and all.”
“Yeah, those blue gitz made some pretty good dakka, huh?”
There was a lull as the large and small greenskins admired Rokka’s handiwork in reverence. Rokka hated to admit it but the thought of his homage to Sunz kultur going into battle and getting all scratched up was downright painful. Surely there was a better use for it.

“Say, Spanna, wot would you fink about racing dis tank?”
“Racing it boss? That’d be Ace!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t even have to use da rokkits if we was racing dem uvver grot gitz. We’d blow ‘em off da line!”

If Rokka was pleased with himself before, now he was downright delighted. Instead of wasting his evenings listening to the runtherdz yammer on, he had just invented a whole new form of orky entertainment. A buncha grotz racing and blowing each other up was sure to be a big hit in camp. Why, you could even place wagers on the little buggers too…

Part 4 A Goff Tank
Grot tank races were indeed a huge hit in camp. They spurred an arms race of sorts with each mek devoting their free time to churning out faster and deadlier tanks. The gretchin pilots got proficient at driving them to their limits as their ork overlords demanded better and better performances to clinch the win for their respective clans.

It was inevitable in an ork camp on the edge of an active warzone that the tanks would be pressed into battle, and they proved to be devastatingly effective when formed into small squads. So as unorky as the notion of giving a grot a tank was, eventually even the Goffs wanted in too, and they built their tanks in typical Goff fashion - all armor, no nonsense.