Mama's Boys The sump-edge was where things went when the hive had finished with them. Wastewater. Soot. Secrets. Bodies with their pockets turned out. Broken machinery with the maker’s mark filed off. If a thing still had value, it did not stay by the sump for long. What remained was what no one wanted, what no one claimed, and what no one dared look at too closely. Porrig Duff had known finer places. Not many, and not for long, but enough to know just how low he had fallen. Their camp clung to a narrow shelf of riveted iron and patched plastek above the black-green heave of the sump. The filth below breathed up its chemical stink in slow, wet gusts. Two dented cookpots sat over promethium burners. Milo had a stew going in one of them—something brown, oily and stringy that would have been unfit for an officer’s dog and was presently the finest thing Porrig had smelled all week. Norrie lay prone behind a cracked slab of ferrocrete, long-las cradled in his forearms, trying hard to look like a man already worthy of a story. Barley sat by the stacked packs and scavenged tins, stub gun across his knees, upright as a parade-ground recruit and twice as miserable. Milo watched from higher up in the shell of an old conveyor housing, half hidden in rust and shadow, spending no effort at all on looking dangerous. Porrig himself sat on an upturned crate and cleaned his long rifle with the calm care of a man determined to appear well above his circumstances. “They’re back,” Milo called down, not raising his voice. He never did. Porrig slid the bolt home and rose. “Aye. I’d begun to think the sump had eaten them.” “They smell worse than the sump,” Barley muttered. “No one smells worse than the sump,” said Milo. “That one does,” Norrie said, peering down his sights. “The lively one.” Porrig crossed to the edge of the camp and looked through a gap in the hanging sheets of corrugated metal. There they were again. Four Ogryns, huge as hab-doors, moving along the lip of the sump like wreck-haulers hunting chain and scrap. Scarred. Augmented. Ugly with work. Not born ugly, Porrig thought. Made that way. The hive had a talent for it. The female led them. He had been watching her for two days now and had reached three conclusions. First: she was no ordinary Ogryn. That had been plain from the start. Ogryns did not usually move with stillness. They moved with appetite, confusion, momentum, simple purpose. This one carried all the same size and force as the others, yet held it in reserve like a weapon she had not yet chosen to draw. Second: she and her boys were hungry enough to risk something stupid. Third: she had not yet let them become stupid. She was a formidable sight even by underhive standards. Her right augmetic arm was grotesquely large, industrial and overbuilt, more loading rig than limb, bigger even than the left, which was no flesh arm either. Her clothes sat where they could over a broad, heavy body that had no shame in its own size. Her stomach pressed easy over her belt. Her breasts strained the top of her shirt with the same unbothered pride. Tattoos crossed every scrap of visible skin—old ink, prison ink, gang ink, memory ink—making a ledger of triumph and hurt. Her red hair was piled back in a style that had no business surviving this close to the sump and yet somehow did. It looked absurd. It looked magnificent. It looked like defiance. Behind her came the others. One had an arc welder bonded where an arm ought to have been, fixed to him so brutally it looked as much punishment as tool. He kept glancing at doors, pipe-runs, joints and anchor points, with the bright, sidelong look of a man who noticed more than he was ever expected to understand. Another was broad and patient-faced, though the patience in him looked fragile with hunger. Bruv, the others had called him. Porrig had heard why. The fellow seemed to call everyone bruv with such wholehearted regularity that eventually the word had stuck to him like a second hide. The last was trouble with legs. He carried his temper like a live charge. Too quick in the eyes, too quick in the breath, twitching at every shift of shadow. Red Rumm. A daft sort of name, and somehow exactly right. The female stopped thirty yards short of the camp. Her boys stopped with her. Good, thought Porrig. She’s still got hold of them. “Up,” he called mildly. The Ratlings rose into view with rifles ready. Norrie made a little performance of it. Milo did not. Barley’s hands shook only slightly. Red Rumm bared his teeth and took half a step forward. “Rumm,” said the female. That was all. Not loud. Not harsh. Just his name. He froze. The one with the welder gave a crooked little grin. Porrig stepped out where they could see him properly, boots on the cook-platform, rifle resting easy in the crook of his arm. He spread his free hand in welcome, as though receiving callers in a respectable hab and not on a scrap ledge over poisoned sludge. “Well now,” he said. “You have either grown much braver than is sensible, or much hungrier than is healthy.” The female Ogryn’s eyes flicked to the cookpot. Then to the rifles. Then back to him. “Both,” she said. Honest. Porrig liked that. “What you want?” she asked. There it was again. Not dullness. Not emptiness. Economy. Porrig had heard enough officers mistake silence for stupidity to know the difference. He gave her a small, courtly nod. “Name’s Porrig Duff. Formerly a decorated servant of the God-Emperor’s innumerable wars. Presently a man of reduced means and exquisite taste.” The female did not smile. “You run,” she said. Porrig spread his hands. “I survived. There’s an art to that.” The welder-armed Ogryn barked a laugh. He checked himself when she glanced at him. “And you?” Porrig asked. The woman looked at the stew again. Then at the rifles. Then finally at him. “Suriah.” A simple answer. Not a simple one. Below them, the sump shifted and breathed. Somewhere in the dark water, something large broke the surface with a wet, sluggish gulp. Then Suriah said, “My boys hungry.” Not my crew. Not my Ogryns. My boys. Porrig let his gaze run along her line. Red Rumm looked ready to leap the whole distance and tear someone apart. Bruv stared openly at the pot. The clever one—Grint, if Porrig had the names straight—watched everything with quick, measuring eyes. “My boys too,” said Porrig. That got him the slightest narrowing of Suriah’s eyes. She shifted her weight. Only a little. Enough for the guttering stove-light to catch the crude brutality of both augmetic arms. The larger one looked less like a limb and more like a piece of manufactorum equipment that had developed a grievance. “Folks don’t see your boys,” she said. Porrig said nothing. Suriah tipped her head towards Milo, then Norrie, then Barley with his rigid little soldier’s posture and both hands tight on the stub gun. “Too little. Too easy pass over. Easy laugh at. Easy forget.” Norrie bristled. Barley coloured. Milo, above them, remained a statue with a rifle. Then Suriah tapped two thick fingers against the broad metal plate of her own chest. “Folks see mine. They see us first.” Her voice was warm, almost gentle. Underneath it was iron. “They see size. They see chain-marks. They see what hurt ’em if we get close.” She jerked her chin at Bruv and Red Rumm. “They see trouble. They see fear. But they don’t listen none. Don’t think. Don’t ask. Just shoot, or run, or put a price on our heads.” Porrig felt his smile coming back despite himself. She had him. Not with charm. With truth. “You little men got eyes,” Suriah said. “Got hands what know rifles. Got patience. My boys ain’t got patience. Not much.” She gave Red Rumm a sidelong look. “Ain’t got enough words neither.” Grint folded his arms and said nothing, though the flicker in his expression suggested he had thoughts on that subject. Suriah went on. “But my boys got weight. Got thunder. Ain’t a backward step in ’em.” That was a line worth remembering. “You hide down here with guns and stew,” she said. “Still folks look past you. We stomp any place else, folks see us a mile off, but we cain’t hold ground, cain’t eat regular, cain’t sleep easy. You got belly. We got brawn.” She shrugged those immense shoulders. “Sounds like a bargain.” This time it was Milo, high above them, who spoke first. “Does to me.” Barley looked up sharply. “Milo—” “Hush,” said Milo. Porrig stepped down from the cook-platform and took one careful pace forward. Then another. Enough to show respect. Not enough to be foolish. “A very fine bargain,” he said softly. “You bring presence, force, and the kind of violence that changes a room’s mind. We bring eyes, rifles, and just enough good sense to stop all four of you lads charging the first thing that annoys them.” “Three,” said Suriah. Porrig blinked. “Sorry?” She hitched a thumb at herself. “Three lads. Then me.” For the first time, he saw her smile. Not broad. Not soft. But it changed her face all the same, making her look no gentler, only more dangerous. Porrig laughed. “Well then,” he said, “that is better still.” He held out his hand. Suriah looked at it. Then at him. “You feed my boys,” she said. “You don’t point guns at ’em lessen I say. You don’t talk down at ’em neither. They mine.” Porrig put a hand over his heart. “Madam, I would never dream of it.” “Mm.” She took his hand in the smaller augmetic fist. It could have crushed every bone in him to meal. Instead it squeezed just hard enough to make the point and let it settle. Behind her, Bruv’s face split into a dopey grin. “Big Mama got us food, bruv,” he rumbled. Red Rumm, still staring murder at the Ratlings, said, “Mama always get us food.” Grint said nothing, but there was a clever, sidelong look in his eyes, as though he were already measuring what four Ratlings, a sump-edge camp and one good bargain might become. Porrig looked from one huge face to the next, then up at Milo, Norrie and Barley. Four little men with rifles. Four escaped slave Ogryns with nowhere else to stand. One broad woman at the centre of them all, all swagger and scars and impossible stillness, red hair set just so above a body built for labour and turned, through long cruelty and longer patience, into something no one sensible would ever try to own again. The words came to him then, half joke and half revelation. “Well,” Porrig said, “looks as though we’re Mama’s boys now.” Barley gave a startled bark of laughter. Norrie grinned despite himself. But it was Suriah who made it law. She let go of Porrig’s hand, swept her great augmetic arm to gather all seven of them in, and said, warm as a cookstove and hard as a pit door: “Damn right.

Big Mama Sur, born Suriah, is the kind of woman the underhive learns to recognise a second too late. Vast as an industrial saint and twice as dangerous, she carries the scars of slavery openly - brutal augmetic arms built to lift freight and break bone, prison tattoos inked across a body that speaks of hardship endured rather than beauty denied, and the calm, measuring stillness of someone who has spent a lifetime watching for weakness in the systems that caged her. Her red hair is kept with a stubborn, almost defiant care, her swagger is unhurried, and her warmth towards her boys sits side by side with an iron authority. To strangers she is an impossible sight, part matriarch, part labour engine, part folk-devil of the sump-edge, but to those who belong to her, Big Mama Sur is shelter, judgement, food, justice, and home.

Grint, known among the gang as The Wit, is proof that an Ogryn does not need to be educated to be clever. Broad-shouldered and scarred by the same machinery of bondage that shaped them all, he bears a brutal arc welder fused to the stump of one arm, a tool of labour turned into a weapon that spits fire and judgement in equal measure. Grint watches the world with a sharp, sidelong intelligence, always counting exits, weaknesses, hinges, habits and lies, and though his speech is rough and his pride in his own cleverness often outruns his actual polish, there is no mistaking the mind working behind his heavy brow. Where Big Mama Sur is the gang’s centre of gravity, Grint is its unlikely schemers - observant, cunning, and quietly vain about being smarter than anyone expects an Ogryn to be. He is the sort of brute who notices how the door locks, where the power runs, and which fool in the room thinks he is safe.

Porrig Duff is a Ratling who wears charm the way other men wear armour. Once a famed marksman in the Imperial Guard, he carries himself with the easy bravado of a bon vivant who refuses to admit how far he has fallen, speaking with warmth, wit, and just enough theatrical flourish to keep others off balance. Yet beneath the laughter and good manners lies a colder instrument entirely, a patient sniper’s mind, always measuring distance, motive, weakness and reward. Porrig sees people as clearly as he sees targets through a scope, and what makes him dangerous is not merely that he can put a round through a man’s eye at range, but that he knows exactly which man needs killing, which needs flattering, and which can be turned into an ally before the first shot is fired.

Milo Gaskin is the oldest of the Ratlings and the one least interested in performing for anyone. Grizzled, deliberate, and worn thin by years of soldiering, he carries himself with the hard economy of a man who has long since learned that survival depends less on flair than on steadiness, timing, and knowing exactly when to speak. Where Porrig dazzles, Milo endures; where Norrie strains towards legend, Milo remains anchored in discipline, habit, and the unromantic craft of staying alive. He watches from the edges, says little, and misses less, his sniper’s patience lending him the air of a man who has already considered the worst outcome and adjusted for it. Among the Ratlings he is the rock, older, sterner, and quietly authoritative, and even in a gang built around outsized personalities, Milo’s word carries weight because it is never spent lightly.

Barley Bladd is the youngest of the Ratlings and still carries something perilously close to the posture of a soldier, as if drill and discipline might yet impose order on the chaos of the underhive. Barely out of boot camp before desertion swept him into Porrig Duff’s orbit, he has not yet learned how to wear cynicism comfortably, and there remains in him an earnestness that the others have long since traded for caution, humour, or hard experience. He defers more naturally to Milo than to Porrig, trusting steadiness over swagger, and though he lacks the reputation, polish, or killer instinct of the older Ratlings, he watches, listens, and tries very hard not to be the weak link in a gang of outsized personalities. Young, hungry, and not yet fully formed, Barley is still caught between the obedient soldier he was being made into and the harder, stranger creature Necromunda will eventually require him to become.

Bruv is the broadest kind of loyalty made flesh: an Ogryn of immense strength, simple appetites, and a heart so openly worn that even his violence feels almost honest. Marked by servitude and rebuilt in part with a heavy augmetic arm meant for labour rather than dignity, he moves through the world with the patient solidity of a freight engine, enduring more than most and asking for less, so long as Big Mama Sur is there to give the next order and the next meal is not too far away. He speaks little, but when he does it is usually to call someone “bruv”, the word carrying in his mouth a rough, indiscriminate affection that has become both habit and name. Others may mistake him for witless muscle, but Bruv possesses a quieter quality rare in the underhive: uncomplicated faith. He trusts his Mama Sur, follows his group, and when the moment comes to hit, he does so with all the terrible certainty of a man who never learned the luxury of doubt.

Norrie Pott is the young, not green enough to be harmless, but still hungry enough to believe reputation can be seized if he only shoots straight enough and stands close enough to greatness. A Ratling sniper with sharp eyes and sharper ambition, he lives half a step behind Porrig Duff in admiration and half a step ahead of himself in his own imagination, forever straining to become the sort of marksman whose name travels faster than his bullets. Where Milo is steady and Porrig is effortless, Norrie is all restless energy and upward reach, eager to prove he belongs among harder men and bigger legends. That hunger makes him a little vain, a little reckless, and entirely alive to the possibility that the next shot, the next hunt, the next lucky break might be the one that turns him from hanger-on to name worth remembering.

Red Rumm is violence held on a fraying leash. Large even for an Ogryn and fitted with a brutal augmetic arm built for labour and repurposed for ruin, he carries himself like a riot waiting for permission, all twitching suspicion, wounded pride, and barely contained appetite for damage. He hates being treated as a fool, senses mockery even where none is meant, and answers fear or confusion with the same instinctive solution: break the thing in front of him until it stops being a problem. Yet beneath the hair-trigger temper there is something almost childlike in him, a desperate need to be useful, to be respected, and above all to be kept in the good graces of Big Mama Sur, whose word is one of the few things in the world capable of halting him mid-fury. To strangers, Red Rumm is a nightmare in motion. To Mama’s Boys, he is the gang’s most dangerous question mark, a wrecking force of loyalty and rage that can smash open a path to freedom or bring the whole world crashing down if left untended.