Al rode the Griffon girl, flying toward the city of Veling. The fog of war along the way had already been cleared, and wolf packs were following closely on the ground. He could land and enter the forest at any time, unafraid of being surrounded by a flock of enemy aerial units.
He needed to quickly understand the detailed situation of the besieging Greenskins. There were not many people in the entire tribe who could establish a stable mental connection with him and allow Al to share their vision.
Bald Beast.
The Greenskin Warboss besieging Veling.
One of the most WAAAAAGH! Warbosses serving under the Great Warboss.
Without a doubt, even among all the Greenskin Warbosses defeated or conquered during the rise of the Great Warboss Gorkamorka Wyvern, he was considered one of the most savage and difficult to deal with.
His name was very strange, much like the Great Warboss Gorkamorka, which was considered quite rare among Greenskins.
He had once been a Greenskin slave captured by a remnant faction of Chaos Dwarfs. His slave master had welded a black iron mask onto his face, making it impossible for him to ever let out a ferocious WAAAAAGH! roar, suppressing his very nature.
Hobgoblin overseers were then tasked with torturing and breaking these savage Greenskin Big Uns, gradually teaching them to obey their masters' commands.
Bald Beast—back then he wasn't called this, or rather, he didn't have a name at all.
With his silent and loyal traits (relative to other Greenskins) and his immense strength, he caught the eye of the overseers. Sent to serve under a Hobgoblin Khan, his outstanding performance earned him a "blessing" from his Chaos Dwarf masters:
They stuffed him into a set of red-hot Hellforged plate armor that had just been smelted in the infernal forges.
The Greenskin's skin was instantly carbonized, the extreme heat penetrating straight to his bones. Even the vitality of a Troll—minus the weakness to fire—would find such comprehensive, full-body burns unbearable.
But the Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers used evil magic to sustain his life, forcing him to endure the initial agonizing stages. By the time the Hellforged plate armor dissipated enough heat and cooled down, Bald Beast was forever welded to the heavy armor.
The armor became his flesh and skin, fused directly to his bones.
This was his new prison.
The overseers placed a battle helmet on his head, completely sealing this Big Un inside along with the mask. Even feeding could only be done by sliding food through a tube into a tiny hole in the visor.
The Chaos Dwarfs used all sorts of methods to enslave and break these Greenskins to ensure they wouldn't betray them. Baldy was assigned as a bodyguard to a Sorcerer. During a battle against Chaos beasts in the Badlands, he threw himself into harm's way to protect his master. The price was having nearly half his skull sheared off by a Four-Armed Minotaur; the Hellforged helmet was split open by the desperate, fatal strike, exposing a mix of red, white, and green brains and blood.
A blast from a Hellcannon subsequently obliterated the Minotaur. The Sorcerer master sighed at the recent peril, then kicked his seemingly dying loyal servant aside and rejoined the battle. It wasn't until the fighting ended and the Goblin slaves began cleaning the battlefield—preparing to recover Bald Beast's corpse to strip the armor—that one Goblin was suddenly crushed to death by the abruptly rising Big Un.
Only then did the allied forces realize this Big Un wasn't actually dead. He slowly, unsteadily stood up from the ground, picked up his battleaxe, and continued to follow his master.
The Sorcerer was amazed by his bodyguard's resurrection from the dead, but didn't overthink it and continued to accept Bald Beast. However, being far from a fortress, the cracked helmet was difficult to repair. After his injuries healed, his completely bald, regrown scalp was left exposed to the air.
The Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer found his bodyguard's comical appearance amusing. He brought the Big Un along in all subsequent battles, treating him almost like a pet and naming him "Baldy". In his free time, he would use his hammer-headed staff to rap on that bare Greenskin head as a form of entertainment.
These days of being a bodyguard-cum-pet lasted until the wave of WAAAAAGH! incited by Gorkamorka Wyvern in the Badlands casually shattered the Chaos Dwarf expeditionary force. As Baldy fled through the Badlands following his master, the Sorcerer master once again decided to amuse himself by mocking his bald head. Before the other guards could react, Baldy turned around and used his warhammer to smash the Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer's entire head down into his chest. Thus, those days ended.
The Greenskin slaves rioted alongside Baldy's rebellion, killing their arrogant masters who vainly tried to chain savagery. The half-daemon souls bound to the armor—intended to shackle the Greenskins while also enhancing their strength—were utterly destroyed and dispersed by the WAAAAAGH! energy whipped up by the Great Warboss!
Subsequently, this slave army formed a brand new Greenskin warband. Wearing the armor forged by the Chaos Dwarfs, they tamed a herd of wild Warboars and roamed the Badlands, crushing everything that moved in their sight—until they crashed into the Wyvern Guard of the Great Warboss Gorkamorka.
The Great Warboss used absolute power to defeat this group of frenzied fellow slaves. Perhaps due to shared experiences, he took a strong liking to the leading rebel, Baldy. He added the moniker "Beast" to his name and took him in as a personal guard.
Soon after, he was sent out to act as a Warboss, commanding his own forces.
The silent Bald Beast possessed the thoroughly tortured, insanely savage blood of a Greenskin to his very marrow!
He never shouted WAAAAAGH!, but with every attack, he swung with all the strength in his body, cleaving at his enemies, chopping off their heads, and mincing their limbs.
He didn't even need to command personally. The Great Warboss assigned him and his slave brothers the most cunning and clever Night Goblin Warbosses, who could understand the meaning behind a Big Un's single gesture.
He chopped off many heads that dared defy the name of the Great Warboss for Gorkamorka. At the Battle of the Guadaz River, Bald Beast rode his Warboar and personally broke through the Estalian infantry squares, shattered the shrine of Myrmidia with his battleaxe, turned around, and severed the head of the High Priest Warleader, completely crushing the human left wing.
The Great Warboss Gorkamorka dispatched him to lead the victorious Greenskin army across the Guadaz River, advancing west and north to sweep up stragglers along the way, breach towns, sow panic, and cause a mass exodus.
Now, Bald Beast had encamped his highly spirited Greenskin Boyz outside Veling. This city was the gateway to northern Estalia. By breaking it, they could take the narrow paths between Veling, Demontrei, and the Piña Forest straight to the north. If they then breached Demontrei, the doors to the entirety of Estalia—east, south, west, and north—would be thrown wide open to the Greenskins.
The ugly, crude, and vulgar Greenskin siege towers were being built bit by bit outside the city. The highly motivated Boyz spent every day and night brawling and smashing things, unable to wait to breach the city, cause massive destruction, chop off the heads of all who resisted, and capture the human 'Umies who lost the ability to fight back;
They would erect idols of Gork and Mork in the very center of the city, defile human palaces and statues with foul dung, smash anything that looked orderly into pieces, and then loot any scrap or shiny gubbinz worth collecting.
This was the meaning of a Greenskin's life—a bunch of brainless, savage creatures who were blissfully happy as long as they could get into a fight.
The Tileans had once hired Greenskins to strike at their own countrymen, achieving considerable results.
There were also quite a few Greenskins operating as mercenaries in Magritta. These things mostly had some degree of control over their natures, capable of accepting human employment and venting the belligerence and destructiveness in their bloodlines onto designated targets.
Unfortunately, before the siege began, many of these foolish Greenskins planned to openly march out of the city to join this WAAAAAGH! that had awakened their very DNA. These were actually the smarter ones. A small minority, influenced by the massive WAAAAAGH!, completely ignored that they were vastly outnumbered and just started wreaking havoc, ultimately getting exterminated by the Magrittans inside the city.