Jokaero

This article is awesome. Do not fuck it up.

This article contains something which makes absolutely no logical sense, such as Nazi Zombie Mercenaries, Fucking Space Orangutans, anything written by a certain Irish leper or Robin Crud-ace, or Wizards of the Coast hiring the fucking Pinkertons over a children’s card game. If you proceed, consider yourself warned.

Everything's better with space orangutans.

"Order your men to stop their firing. I will show you my personal army build... Operator, it is time. Do the... How you say...? 'Funky monkey!"

– Inquisitor Coteaz about to unleash the cheese.

"To suggest that we can learn anything about the simian nature from a study of man is sheer nonsense. Why, man is a nuisance."

– Doctor Zaius, Planet of the Apes

Lesser known fact: the entire Warhammer 40,000 universe and all its depressing crushing grimdarkness, from the wearisome toiling of factory serfs, the endless struggle of the Imperial Guard against overwhelming odds, the callous judgement of the Inquisition, the fiery fanaticism of the Ecclesiarchy, the malevolence of the Chaos Gods, to the plots of the Necrons and Eldar and all the rest is just volumes upon volumes of set up for the fact that there are mad scientist Space Orangutans zipping around.

Overview

The Jokaero (Pongo ingenio - fun fact, it's the same genus as the real-life Orang-utan) are an ape-like race created by the Old Ones a to serve as the tech staff during the War in Heaven. It is questionable if they are truly a sapient race despite being technologically advanced, because they don't possess a language, culture, or any greater motivation than bare survival. Thus, the Imperium usually considers them to be animals and treats them as such. And if you think that this is said in a derogatory manner, think again. This means that humans are not determined to exterminate them like they would be if Jokaero would be your average sapient alien species and even attempt to have one as a pet, like some members of the inquisition do.

It is speculated that their understanding of technology is coded into their genes, much like Ork Oddboyz (Mekboyz, Painboyz etc.). However, they differ from their greenskinned brethren because their technology isn't psychically taped-together crap. These space apes are somehow potentially more advanced than the entire Imperium, almost all of the Mechanicus, and (in different fields of technology) most Eldar craftsmen.

They are capable of interstellar travel, and migrate as a pack in large, perfectly geometric spaceships which make use of invisible currents of energy, inherent to the fabric of the universe. While it is rare that they choose to do this, a large percentage of Jokaero live upon these spacecrafts. These craft are some of the most powerful in the galaxy: the Deathwatch once attempted to attack a "Jokaero star-frame", only to be fended off by an "entire fleet's worth of firepower".

They create Digital Weapons (so called because they're worn on a person's fingers, not because they're CGI. Pretty much all post-Horus Heresy digital weapons), which some factions, mainly high-up Imperials and influential Techpriests, make use of. They also make the Spyrer suits found amongst the High Nobility of Hive Worlds such as Necromunda or worlds in the Calixis sector. Mainly, rich Imperial snobs will somehow use Jokaero as a Protectorate Protector-ape (a euphemism for forced labor) to get cool shit.

Despite this, GW lore says Jokaero are extremely rare, and impossibly elusive to boot. They are fairly analogous to animals, and so are instinctively distrustful of other beings (almost always rightfully so). If you do manage, by some miracle, to get a hold of one of these orangutans, and not get curb-stomped by their teeny Multilaser rings and bracelets, you still need to manage to keep them. They have a nasty habit of knowing how everything every race could possibly build works and operates, plus things nobody else in the universe knows. Naturally, this means that any prison they are held in is usually temporary, despite any and all preventative measures, although it may immediately tinker with the prison after escaping and then become trapped in the now improved prison, from which it will escape and restart the cycle. Logic is not a necessary component of the Warhammer universe. Keeping this in mind, it is not impossible to work with a Jokaero (and thus acquire more Digital Weapons); if you can convince them that you are friendly, they won't run from you and you can essentially roll with them for a while, hopefully getting some Digital Weapon death-bling in the bargain. If you are the grimdark version of Jane Goodall, you might even manage to acquire one as a pet/coworker, seeing as they are a very rare and valuable resource. However, this is exceedingly rare, and accounting for the vastness of known space, only the wellest-to-do of Rogue Traders, beastmasters, and super-rich, eccentric Imperial Lords have a Jokaero in their possession. At least one has been kept as a permanent retainer to an Inquisitor and was happy to go along with whatever they wanted - it even repaired a superheavy tank to full working order and THEN proceeded to improve it in every conceivable way, making it as fast as a Salamander which came in pretty handy when it came to tankshocking deamons.

Barring all this, Jokaero are still stereotypically finicky, making doohickies on a whim: sometimes not at all, sometimes for days straight. There is no guarantee that the gadgets it makes will be Digital Weapons; however, anything it does make will assuredly be magnitudes more advanced (and smaller) than any Imperial equivalent (if there is one). For example, if you plead at it for months on end to build you a finger-mounted Meltagun, and it can make a subdermally forehead-mounted Multi-melta in three hours, the Jokaero might still just ignore you, get hungry, and build an antigravity energy-field banana peeler, use it once, and then throw it away only to build a diesel-powered diamond-tipped banana peeler a week later. As said above, the Jokaero mostly make things out of simple survival need: self-defence lasers, multi-dimensional backpacks, infrared goggles, and the like. But they're wildly inconsistent about what they do and don't value and are apt as not to eagerly trade a plasma pistol for a banana, for they can always build another plasma pistol but the banana is a banana.

It's also worth noting that they completely disprove the Mechanicus' notion that all technology the imperium might need was invented in the dark age of technology.

Jokaero in Warhammer Adventures

An adult Jokaero named Flegan-Pala joins the gaggle of child heroes in Attack of the Necron. He is nicknamed “Fleapit,” much to his chagrin. The Lexmechanic, Erasmus, claims that they are native to Holy Terra, but he may be in error (The "Galactic Compendium" in the back of the second book clarifies that they are not from Holy Terra). Flegan-Pala is given a chapter from his own perspective, which shows that Jokaero are fully sapient, though he is not able to speak in Low Gothic. His technological aptitude is depicted as being wondrous; he’s able to create a sonic cannon in seconds when a Necron hunter approaches him. When he’s first introduced, he’s shown to be able to physically overpower an Ogryn.

Jokaero in Warhammer 40K Tabletop

Visual aids.

Recently, with the Codex: Grey Knights including Jokaero as a possible bodyguard unit for Inquisitors, /tg/ quickly found a loophole in the rules that allowed them to field an entire army of space-orangutans (the so-called "Barrel of Monkeys" army build). The result is that Codex: Grey Knights has been jokingly called Codex: Jokaero.

By the way, you know those little shiny rings they have? Those extremely small, light, and TINY rings? Yeah. Those are all FUCKING LASCANNONS. And Heavy Flamers. And Multi-Meltas. AT THE SAME TIME.

• Step 1: Play a 6000pts Apocalypse game
• Step 2: Field Inquisitor Coteaz as HQ and 163 Jokaero
• Step 3: Take a picture of your opponents face when he realizes you have 163 Lascannons/Multi-meltas/Heavy flamers (I.E. can fuck up anything)
• Step 4: ????
• Step 5: Profit!
• Step 6: Die a horrible death that could satisfy Khorne for centuries. Could.

Gallery

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  This is a Karman from AT-43 and not, in fact, a Jokaero, but numerous fa/tg/uys have voiced that they intend to use them as proxies for their all-monkey army.

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  A Jokaero Drop Pod.

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