Nuln Leadbealchers!

Just had an idea that I think will carry over to the rest of my army.  I've decided that my Ogre army will be largely a tribe of roaming Ogre Mercenaries.  With the inclusion of my many manly Maneater models (try saying that three times fast), and with the already vaguely Imperial Bull and Gnoblar units, I think I'll carry the theme over into my Leadbelchers.


FLUFF WARNING!  Read on at your own peril!  =D

My fluff for this unit will be that these Ogre mercenaries were paid to join a small Imperial army specifically to guard a battery of Nuln artillery for a campaign against insurrectionists.  Seeing how they admired the large and devastating weapons, an intrepid Engineer decided to teach these Ogres some of the more basic points of the artillerist's art while on the road between battles. 

Showing an amazing (for Ogres, anyway) aptitude for learning, the lumbering hulks spent their nights poring over sketches and drilling simple arithmetic tables and equations of range finding and wind adjustment into their muscle-bound heads. 

During battles, they would watch the cannon crews work, memorizing their routines of loading, sighting, and firing their cannons.  While other Ogres would have stood around waiting for the enemy to bring the fight to them, the Ogre mercenaries were cultivating their appreciation of artillery and its use in battle.

Then late one evening, while camped deep within Reikwald forest, disaster struck.  Chaos-worshiping traitors within the ranks assassinated the army's Generals and Captains as they slept, and a horde of filthy and crazed beastmen allied with the mutated insurrectionists stormed out of the forest to destroy the now-leaderless army. 

The Engineer Captain and his men were among the first to be slaughtered, and seeing that the great and powerful cannons were left without masters, the Ogres ripped the great weapons from their carriages and brought the fight to the enemy, blasting them with whatever grapeshot they could find and using the massive cannons as clubs if any of the beastmen drew near. 

At some point during the bloodbath, the beastmen lost their nerve and routed. 

As the sun rose, the Ogres saw that they were among the few living souls left within the once-great army of the Empire.  Without proper leadership, the disheartened state troopers began the long trek back to Nuln to report the slaughter. 

None thought to ask the Ogres to go with them, and the cannons were chalked up as a loss.



/FLUFF

So in keeping with what I think is an awesome background story to my leadbelchers, I'm going to be painting them up in the army colors of Nuln (they haven't thought to change their clothes since the great massacre) and I'm going to call them by the names their old cannon crews called their cannons.  They've long since forgotten their original names.  "Long Tom" "Ol' Cranky" "Ironsides" and "Brunhilda"