So I saw James and Bryan leaving on Tuesday with what looked like armfuls of stuff for playing, not just painting or working on stuff. It turns out that they were off to play Necromunda, so they could bone up on how to play. It’s a name I’d heard before, but nothing I’d actually looked INTO. And what with Games Workshop about to release their biggest box set of minis ever… Well, noob, you know what this means, don’t you? TIME TO LEARN YOU A BOOK. Well… time to have a look through and do some research anyway.

Now… In a completely DIFFERENT game, a Gen-X gamer, and as an expatriate Seattle-ite, I’ve got a thing for Shadowrun. I’ve even got the amount of dice necessary to play the previous editions should I ever get the chance. I’ve often paraphrased Blackadder in that I’d mud-wrestle my own mother to get a chance to properly play Shadowrun again. That game starts you off in the treaty city of Seattle. But to the south of that, you have ‘The Barrens‘. Yes, the font’s not the only thing Blizzard ripped off from FASA. However in this case, the Barrens are the ash-covered remains Tacoma, WA, after Mount Rainier erupted… well, August 17th 2017. So a few years ago. (Don’t fret. Blade Runner is no longer in the future either. That’s happened THIS month, gentle readers.)

And the Tacoma Barrens are chock full of gangers and go-gangs. Fighting for territory amidst the wreckage of those cities. And that’s what Necromunda reminds me of. Gangs fighting in the ashes of a wasteland. So let’s see how on the mark that is…

The first thing I’mma say here is that Necromunda’s a skirmish game that bears some resemblance to most of Games Workshop’s other games, but I’m not looking to get into the ephemera of how the rules in THIS game are different from the rules in these four OTHER games. (That way madness lies, my dears.)

What we have here is what in Warhammer 40K is called a ‘Hive World‘. These are essentially dead worlds with great manufacturing cities on em. Think of a planet that’s gone through thousands and thousands of years of industrial abuse. Then think of all the ash and waste those factories have produced in the effort to keep the Imperium of Man supplied in its never-ending wars against chaos and xenos. Materials get brought in, the stuff gets made, the waste gets dumped. Necromunda’s a planet covered in ash and waste. An ecological nightmare.

These great manufacturing cities, or ‘hives‘ as it were, are big enough that they reach into orbit like Olympus Mons does on Mars. These upper floors are where the miles long cathedral-like battlecruisers of the Imperium are made if that gives you an idea. Personally it makes me think of the endless city in the anime ‘Blame!’ whose creator, Tsutomu Nihei has suggested is perhaps bigger than 5 Astronomical Units (AU) in size. (An AU is the distance between the earth and the center of our star Sol. 149.6 million kilometers, roughly.)

But way down in the lower floors, you have gangs at constant war with one another. As above, so below, I guess. Each of these seem gangs seem to be factioned-up with different ‘houses‘ that run various operations in the hive. Recycling, mining & refining, intelligence, technology, medicine & chemicals, etc. And of course, being a game, each of these gang/house alliances gives rise to gangs that tend to express advantages and traits to do with houses they’re allied to. So you get archetypes like the big strong bruiser types in House Goliath’s gangs while you might have the really fast amazon types in House Escher’s gangs. Run and gun tactics in one gang, melee poison users in another.

And of course outside of all this inter-house conflict, you have even more types of gangs you can field in the game like the heretic Khorne-worshipping Corpse Grinder Cults, who supply the populace with food. Only that food’s only a step removed from Soylent Green. And they’re not shy about your knowing how the sausages are made. You’re going to have Hive law enforcement, The guilds that do public utilities and sundries, bounty hunters along with actual chaos and Genestealer cults.

So… essentially it sounds a bit like industrial hell, crossed with the Shadowrun Barrens, Judge Dredd’s Megacity One on the Cursed Earth, the endless wasteland cities of Blame! and the inter-house conflict and drama of Dune. (Which I’d guess probably has some of HR Giger‘s design ethic for some biotechnological horror spice.) There’s even been expansions that take us out of the gargantuan city of Hive Primus and into the ashy desert wastes outside, which looks to me to be a nice little addition of the 80’s post-nuclear wasteland genre and the Mad Max movies to the formula.

Necromunda was once called Araneus Prime, and used to be part of a whole civilization called the Aranean Continuity. (Like Samus Aran?) Anyway when the Imperium of Man showed up and immediately demanded the Aranians join the Emperor’s empire. The Araneans counter suggested the Imperium join THEIR civilization instead. This led to some tense negotiations (with the Imperial Fists), but eventually the Imperium made their point. Then Chaos invaded the Continuity and wrecked EVERYTHING, with only Necromunda meaningfully surviving… If you call what was left survival that is.

So after having read up on this setting… the requisite GrimDark is still there… but this seems a lot more nutty-survivalist, heavy metal, megacorporation-fueled, gang warfare. The reasons for the war seem as varied as the factions, races, houses and gangs involved. I imagine a lot of it has to do with keeping the manufacturing going, destroying the manufacturing, religious or ideological crusading or straight up insanity like with the Corpse Grinders. The stakes would seem to be a lot more on a personal or community level than the all-consuming level of warfare between the Imperium and everyone else that exists. This is more yer down and dirty running the shadows, it feels like. It’s too bad there doesn’t seem to be a straight dice and paper RPG of this alongside the tabletop warfare thing. There would seem to be enough lore to support such a thing.

The game seems to go back to the very early 90’s, when it was released as just a set if low-key skirmish rules that grew into the first Necromunda. But in 2017, it was given a BIIIG update with the Necromunda: Underhive set, with subsequent miniature releases for the other houses. And now you’ve got this big Dark Uprising set coming out with the Corpse Grinder cults… I can think of several characters I’d want to translate into Necromunda fiends of once sort or another. (Maybe some of the characters from Escape from the Bronx (1983). TOBLERONE!! or other such characters from Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder.)

But this looks appealing to me. It seems like a game you play if you want to do some fighting and you don’t necessarily care about why. There’s a bit of framework and lore if you REALLY want to RP a House / Gang / Cultist’s typical behaviours and styles of combat. And the ever-present zealotry of the Imperium of Man versus everything alien or evil is kind of back-burnered in favor of Warhammer 40K’s forever war in microcosm.

See ya round, Chummer. ^_^

-Edward WinterRose is a long time fan of cyberpunk future noir, and plays women characters to a large degree, and would probably end up fielding gangs from Houses Delaque and Escher, respectively.

Your Noobness here did a thing in my first episode of the podcast when I got hired on. It was a cooking show bit called ‘Cookin’ with Gog‘. And I thought it might be fun to have an Orruk cook talk about the differences between the other major races… and by differences, I mean which ones make the best eating. Well, It was a day or three ago that Hunter mentions that it’s not so much Orruks who are about the eating of other folk. That’s Ogors. (Cos there’s no race GW won’t misspell and trademark.) Now.. my impression of Ogres is the Dungeons & Dragons types. The sort you usually don’t meet unless your party runs into them up in the mountains or something and they come at you with a club the size of a middling log. So what is it I need to know about the GWM (Games Workshop Misspelled) Ogors then? Well, since they’re getting a new Battletome, and my painters over at White Metal Games also having a whole Ogor Mawtribe set all painted, finished and ready to rent, how about Your Noobness has a look. It’s time I did my first real look into a Warhammer Fantasy race.

Well, I can see this new Battletome has a couple of groups in it, just like the recent Orruk Battletome. Only in this one we have two Ogor ‘Mawtribes‘, The Gutbusters and the Beastclaw Raiders. But that doesn’t tell me a whole lot. I do see a lot of species-specific terms that it’s hard to keep up with. I see a lot of factions, warbands, kill-teams, chapters when it comes to groups of warriors among the different races. And maybe that’s an article all on its own; hierarchy and terminology so you can keep all this straight. In this case, it would seem the Ogors are a faction, the sub-factions above are ‘Mawtribes‘. And among the Mawtribes, they have nomadic groups called ‘Warglutts‘. And this is where some of what Hunter was talking about comes in. These Warglutts basically eat anything that moves. They call this being on the ‘Mawpath‘.

Okay. Let’s get this out of my system. Cloggchawmp. Gutbuster. Bellybonkers. Chuggmaws. Gluttmeister. Fatsuckers. VoreHorde. The Nomz. Blubbomancers. Chubbfangs. Meatknives. Marrowdrinkers. Bonecrunchers. There. That’s my bingo card. Let’s see how many of these vore-tastic portmanteaus may have actually got used by GW for this faction.

…

Well who ever said I was good at Bingo? However, I do see lots of names for the different groups and concepts among Ogors in the same vein. In this case: Meatfist, Bloodgullet, The Gulping God, Gutmagic, Underguts, Thunderbellies, Winterbite, Frostfang. But like the meme says, at least I tried.

I would say that what we have among the Mawtribes presented here, we seem to have the ‘Gutbusters‘ who about nothing BUT eating, and consist mainly of big-large-giant guys. A bit like someone crossed meat processing experts with an overweight mongol horde. Though points for originality here. While you’ve got a group that’s pretty much melee infantry, you’ve actually got a ranged Ogor group here too. The ‘Underguts‘ are pretty much pale, subterranean Ogors that tote cannons the same way soldiers tote rifles. And they’re pretty damn good shots too. Which I suppose puts a whole new spin on the idea of a ‘broadside‘.

Yeah. The hits just keep coming, right?

The Beastclaw Raiders are more the traditional seeming ogre stereotype I think of. These would seem to be cold winter mountain-dwelling barbarian horde types. They’re still big-large-giant guys who want to eat you. But they’re more about beast-riding and handling. They sweep into their foes with mounted cavalry raids. Or really fast hunting parties that do speed instead of beating you like brutes do. I think of a really fast group of really big Ogre types with proportional Homer Simpson builds only horribly muscled as well. I think of the, “Oh, he comin’. That reminds me, I probably have time to sharpen my sword before he gets to me- AH GEEZ HE’S ON ME ALREADY! GET OUT OF IT! HE HONGRY!”

There’s even a stealthy subfaction that pretty much operates from the cover of whiteout blizzard conditions. The catch being that they take their blizzard, The Everwinter, with them wherever they go. They ambush you with the help of ‘Yhetees‘ and ‘Frost Sabres‘. Which oddly makes me think of the quote from Frankenstein’s monster: “I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive.“

But that’s just the guys in the new Battletome. That really only gives me a general impression of Ogors as a whole. One of nomadic raiding giant guys that come on like mongol hordes on the steppes that worship eating. Which isn’t far wrong. They seem to have just the one god, The Great Maw. (The Gulping God?) Essentially a great hole in the world with giant rocky spires of teeth around it. Which was probably a meteor or comet strike, but one that caused the Ogors to dream their god into being in The Warp. Which is theologically interesting, certainly.

And I seem to have been right. Wandering nomadic steppe dwelling tribes that fought and related among themselves up in the plains near Cathay. Raiding other folk as they felt like it. They had no compunction against eating anything, but mostly were nomadic peaceful types. But they were starting to encroach on nearby Cathay, to the degree that kids were going missing. At this point, the Celestial Dragon Emperor Xen Huong was all, “Okay, enough of this.”

Whether it was coincidental that the comet/meteor just arrived then, or whether the Dragon Emperor’s astronomers summoned it in vengeance, the impact hits the Ogors a bit like the Tunguska Strike of 1908 on steroids. What, you thought that was just a line in Ghostbusters? Oh no… Two-thirds of the Ogor population were killed pretty much instantly. Their homelands blasted and destroyed in a near-extinction event. Those left, faced with famine and death fell upon anything edible to survive, including themselves. And even after survival of the fittest culled out the weak, they found the hunger they’d accquired never stopped. Indeed, they seem to consider themselves a cursed race in that their hunger never abates, like that of the Maw left in the earth in the impact’s wake.

Some of them went out to that crater and found that it went miles deep into the earth. It was lined with teeth and muscle. Essentially a great hungry maw. (Surprisingly, I found no images of this.) A Sarlacc pit on a scale you could see from orbit. And it would seem that in Age of Sigmar, the maw is revealed to be an aspect of Gork and Mork, whom I understood to be Orruk gods. The more you know, I suppose. Perhaps there will be a little clarification on this point in the new Battletome. I don’t find much in the way of citation to support this.

Fleeing into the mountains of the west, the remaining strong of them were set upon by attrition and hungry predators. They reach a land of ‘sky-titans‘ which seem a precursor race of more intelligent Giants. The Ogors also found these giants’ herds. Which proved as deadly as the things that had been eating them all the way up here when they went, “NOM TIME!” on the herdbeasts. The giants weren’t exactly pleased to find their cattle being rustled either. But their objections didn’t help them. The Ogors outnumbered them greatly. And these invaders, in ‘The War in the Heavens’ conquered and consumed the Sky-Titans to the very last.

Even that place was being tainted by the chaos of the Maw strike, and the Ogors left that too. The ones that stayed mutated into what GWM calls Yhetees. Again. The more ya know. But the survivors went on to the Mountains of Mourn, drove out the Dwarfs, Orruks and Skaven and finally, FINALLY the Ogors had a land of their own again.

I see them described as twice the size of men, and several times as wide. Full of overlapping teeth, and posessed of a gut that’s their pride and joy. Their guts are their status as well-fed conquerors of whatever they happen to want a the time. And tend to be signified by great armor plates over their bellies with all their cooking and eating tools hanging from the belt that secures their ‘Gut Plate’ to them. looks down At the moment… I could probably cosplay one. Albeit a short one…

I see them described as dim. Not bestial in their intelligence. But the idea here is that they’re fine with only knowing how to survive well, and are serene in their lack of need when it comes to higher concepts like good or evil. They seem pretty much only concerned with what fills their bellies well and efficiently. Or what gives them victory in a fight. They’ve even got kind of a ceremonial version of Sumo wrestling called ‘Gut-Barging‘. It’s a nomadic tribal intelligence concerned with status and consumption.

Much and much is made of their never-ending propensity for fighting and meat. Their worship of the maw is centered around feasts where ascendancy to leadership is fought over, and much is consumed in huge and vast pits full of meat and violence. Though they seem to be getting the idea that money is also useful. In that it can be used to finance the stuff they REALLY think is important. This is more an innovation of their current Overtyrant, Greasus Goldtooth. And I’m guessing since they really don’t have technology of their own, this may be where the Underguts are getting their cannons? I somehow don’t see them using the riddle of steel to forge cannons. Something humans didn’t really get right til the late 1600’s or 1700’s during the American Revolutionary War.

There are literally hundreds of tribes of these guys up in the Mountains of Mourn. And they’ve all got their own ways and traditions as they fight for status and food. But they’re still nomadic. They don’t like much to present themselves as a stationary target for predators, other tribes, or angry comets. They’ve kind-of learned that lesson the hard way. So they go where the eating’s good, and where they can demonstrate to others that they’re deserving of meat the most. Even of that means eating you and yours. They’ll unite sometimes against threats deserving of that kind of consideration. But not often.

They do love war. Which I suppose is convenient considering the setting of Warhammer Fantasy. I do like someone who enjoys their situation or their own nature. But getting to swarm over opposing forces, consume them and pillage anything else worth eating speaks RIGHT to the part of the lizard hindbrain in these guys that only really knows how to say, “EAT. KILL.” Only for Ogors, it’s really in that order. Whether it’s still wiggling isn’t really important. Making it go in their mouths very much is.

I’m not sure what I expected when I launched into this article. Not what I found. I kind of went in thinking, “Ogors? Really? Ugh.” to thinking this might be a fun faction to give a bit of a whirl. Not so much good or evil… Just HONGRY. And mostly unafflicted with the need to give a damn about anything’s opinion on how they act apart from their own folk. I mean, you don’t obsess over your food or livestock’s opinion of you is. I mean make no mistake, they’re huge, nasty, an horrible. But there’s a kind of Russo/Mongolian dignity to em too. At least from my own western indoctrinated POV. They don’t look for charity. If you beat em in a fight, then they’re not going to be hard about it. You were strong and they weren’t. That’s not likely to happen unless you’re something bigger than them, so it probably doesn’t come up much.

That, and I think there’s one personality among them out there…. I don’t know where he got the hat and Ogor sized flintlocks, which I’d guess are the size of elephant guns. Is he a pirate? Or did he just eat one? Either way, I’d like to know more about this fellow. Maybe even source that mini and have it for a D&D or other fantasy game character. I’m partial to Ogre characters with a bit of intelligence to em myself. But honestly… I’d like to imagine an Ogor character smart enough, and motivated enough to try to find a way to break the Maw’s hold on his people. One who’d finally sate their hunger, but not in the normal way of just being meat in their bellies.

-Edward WinterRose is a writer for White Metal Games, and has not seen Shrek a whole bunch of times. He also doesn’t imagine playing Ogors with Mike Myers’ brogue, despite his propensity for the accent.

So… the undead are something of a guilty pleasure for me.  There was a time when I was in my 20’s when the Lestat style vampires were entirely my thing.  That being a creature of the night like that and feasting on the evildoer didn’t sound bad at all to me.  I think I reached peak undead burnout when I lived with a coven of self-proclaimed vampires on the west coast.  And since…  it’s been something I don’t visit all that much.  It’s fallen out of vogue for me.  Old hat.  Overdone.  I did try and watch the Twilight movies.  Don’t get me wrong, I was watching these ironically with Rifftrax making fun of them playing in the synched-up background.  I cannot imagine trying to watch them straight.  I might sprain something in my head.  But…  BUT.  There was a time they were cool for me.

The whole thing about the undead still scares me.  I… am a scaredy-cat when it comes to horror movies.  I probably saw a few things that were too scary for me when I was little.  Little Danny Glick rising from his coffin and biting someone in the neck in the old Salem’s Lot, for example.  And to this day, I can’t do Zombies.  Pretty much in any form.  I know why and honestly it’s too long to go into here.  This is not therapy.  Suffice to say, when I finally see the new version of IT, my wife will be there holding my hand. 

So now that I’m teaching myself all about Warhammer, and all their factions, I’m aware that undead are in the game.  I’m not all that squicked out by it, but I never really thought to look INTO it.  So with Halloween upon us, and our Flesh-Eater Courts having come available to rent, I figured I needed to get the hell over it and have a look into them in the game.

Now… I did already have SOMETHING of an impression of the undead in the game.  I’d seen Necron armies in game shops.  My impression of them has been more of metallic skeletons advancing across the smoking wastes of a grimdark battlefield, with glowing green heavy energy rifles and eyesockets.  Pretty much a halloween-ized version of the opening shots from the early Terminator movies.  But this is a deep and rich game setting.  And as always, there’s a lot more to it than that. And besides that, I keep getting told they’re not TECHNICALLY undead. I figure they’re EXACTLY Technically Undead. But we’ll talk about that.

I’m very obviously looking at Warhammer Wiki’s online about the Undead.  But I wanted to kind of liveblog my impressions as I learned about them.  I’m not a horror noob.  I’m a Warhammer noob.  So you don’t have to bear with me TOO much.  I wanted to be a horror writer when I was in grade school.  Back when my last name was Gore, and was the perfect surname for it.  Anyway.  Factions…

The Vampire Counts

Now my favorite vampire movie ever is an obscure Hammer horror film.  Still, hardly anyone remembers Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter.  But near the end, when Benedict Cumberbatch’s actual mom (The Motherbatch) is talking about her dark lineage, she namechecks that she’s a Carstein by birth.  And holds many dark secrets.  (Click the link and look at about 01:15:40.) This is what I immediately go to when I see the VON CARSTEIN crest on the Wiki for the Vampire Counts. 

It looks like it has its base in a lot of Egypt-ISH lore, which feels a bit like some of the ancient egypt built into some of those old Anne Rice books.  (More on that with the Tomb Kings.)  They do even seem to have their own Queen of the Damned in the form of Neferata back in WarHammer Fantasy’s history.  Looks like there’s even a bit of Lord of the Rings baked in with Nagash giving the Vampires a ring to control and in the darkness bind them.  We’ve even got seven vampire lords after Nagash cursed them to being unable to bear sunlight.  It’s not The Nine and the Witch King of Angmar, but I get the point.  And it’s excedingly good DNA to crossbreed with. 

And wow, was I calling it.  It flies straight into the gothic horror of the Hammer-esque remixings of old Bram Stoker’s Dracula from there with the rise of Vlad Von Carstein from Otto von Drak.  And into the vampire wars it goes.  Rushing through and looking at the kinds of monsters I’m seeing in their kinds of army, I can see wanting to play with these folks.  Or at least do some art or miniatures of some of them.  The counts themselves don’t so much seem slavering beasts, relatively speaking, but fleshed out characters that would be interesting to RP, if not field in a battle.  The gothic hammer horror / romantic period vampire setting isn’t lost on me.  And one that I can still appreciate from the vestiges of my youth that remain.

The Vampire Coast

Okay… here’s your real Pirates of the Carabbean salute.  And honestly, what we’ve got here is an injection of the Pirate archetype into the warhammer  game setting.  And while they’re not hugely a faction of their own by the length of their wiki entry, it’s a compelling idea that by  way of their piracy and misdeeds, they become an undead people who found a country of their own with zombies and lizardmen.  It looks like what we’ve got here is an infusion of the pirate adventure genre along with Voudoun and South American Aztec empires of old.  At least from the glance I’m getting.  Is this a full on undead faction of their own?  Have they just not been developed as much?  I have questions.  Cos the ‘drink up me hearties YO-HO!’-ness of my Pirate-loving anarchist self sees the idea of undead pirates and may love the idea more than the old Hammer Horror archetypes of the Vampire Counts.

The Tomb Kings

I have never seen The Mummy.  Any of them.  No classic horror from the early through mid 20th century.  None of the Brendan Fraser led adventure films from later on.  Not even that much lamented one that had Gazelle as the Mummy queen.  The closest I’ve got was the old episode of Amazing Stories about the actor PLAYING the Mummy having to get past the real actual risen mummy of Ra-Amenh-Ka to get to his wife before their daughter is born.

There’s a Rice novel that hits on the more Egyptian side of the undead mythology that I never read, as I’d fallen out with all creatures unbreathing by then.  Doctor Who even plumbed Egyptian folklore for a super-race referred to only as The Osirans, and the recurring villain, Sutekh the Destroyer.  The Tomb Kings would seem to be the precursors of all the Carstein vampire types, and the source of a lot of their lore.  It’s a nice way to bake the two horror sub-genres of undead monsters together.

Looks like some Ten Commandments and Egyptian religion was baked in here as well, which I won’t go TOO into detail on.  I do appreciate how they’ve got this faction sort of associated with the earliest beginnings of organized society, given Egypt’s role in the rise of western societies on the whole; what with the rise of the plow, written language and mathematics.  There are so many ALMOST god names here.  (Like really, SettRA?  PtLa?)  There’s a lot of the fall of ancient Egyptian society as it passes into the sand and its cities crumbled, at least from the horror movie standpoint as the Nehekharan society devolves into necropoli and mortuary cults.

Looks like it went from there into the whole thing with Nagash and the creation-of-the-vampires thing, but eventually after much awfulness, Settra the Imperishable is brought back and breaks the back of this vampire infused necromantic foolishness, beginning the Reign of Millions of Years.  I’m seeing what looks like an incursion of Viking types from Norsca that got WAY cursed by Settra.  A bit of ‘The 13th Warrior’ and ‘Pirates of the Carabbean’ there it’d seem, with a healthy dollop of The Mummy. 

Looking at the flavor of the units, typically fielded full of skeleton warriors, priests and insect hordes, it’s hard not to like.  It might not be my first choice, as it’s not classically been my genre.  But the tragedy of an ancient society of light fallen to darkness, in all its antiquity is an alluring one.  One I wouldn’t turn down a play of.

Ossiarch Bone Reapers.

Now if I hadn’t read up on a BUNCH of undead lore, or at least glossed over it to a large degree.  (Yeah, I’m not gonna absorb all of this in the space of a shift.)  I wouldn’t have known much about the breat betrayer Nagash in all that Vampire Court and Tomb King lore.  That said, there seems to be NO societal archetype he couldn’t corrupt and make defiled undead armies of.  In this case, more far eastern looking societies in the form of Ossiarch Bone Reapers.

In the photos I’m seeing here, I’m seeing a lot of what feels like undead strains of Indian, Mongolian and Chinese descent.  The photos I’m seeing here make me think of the thousands of guardian warrior statues of the Chinese emperors of old.  Their whole schtick of being living bone armor almost feels a bit Necron.  (More on THEM later.)  I’m getting that this is something Nagash literally put together while he’d been cruising the world, amassing knowledge about death magic.  Or maybe they’re just the ongoing relics Nagash left behind in other realms after he was put down by Settra.  The pages I’m finding on the Bonereapers are unclear, and disturbingly free of backstory.  There’s nothing on them in the Fandom Wikis.  So, it looks to me and my noobish vantage-point that this is a thing that’s just ABOUT to drop on the whole Warhammer community.  The minis look fanTAStic in the searches I’m finding.  Especially Orpheon Katakros. Now that said… I just watched a short about these guys on YouTube called ‘The Tithe’. OMG folks, the fellow voicing the video? He sounds like one of the Nemoidians from Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace. Honestly, I’m listening to Orpheon, and hearing, “If you do not submit Nagash’s tithe, your bones will serve us for all eternity. As you know, our blockade is perfectly legal and we’d be happy to receive your ambassadors.” Anyway, have a look for these guys soon, if not already!

Necron (40k)

Okay… now I’ve always been more Sci-Fi than fantasy or horror. So coming to the wiki entry on the Necron being unmatched as a technological race immediately piques my interest. The DNA here from other places is strong here. The Necron as militant, compassionless killing machines that used to be a more intelligent species hits the DALEKS button hard. There’s a few notes of Borg here as well. The reptilian ‘Old Ones’ from so long ago that the Necrontyr seemed to take such umbrage with feels a bit Battlestar Galactica , with the mechanical Cylons overthrowing their reptilian creators.

With the Necrontyr’s betrayal at the hands of the C’Tan in order that they could finally defeat the Old Ones, it seems to bring a new meaning to ‘Be Careful What You Wish For‘. They’re almost NOT undead. But there’s a lot of sci-fi horror happening here. There’s a little bit of HR Giger‘s Biomechanics and a dollop of Zombies from Beyond Space! pulp action and a bit of The Terminator’s rise of the machines happening too. A lot of risen but flayed souls rising to reap what the elder races had sown in their arrogance.

I’m feeling a lot of vibes to do with subservient race with all the breaks against them rising up to be the inexorable doom of the future from ancient times. There’s the Frankenstein complex at play here that informs so much of robot uprising tropes wherein what man has created without compassion in his avarice for power and knowledge coming back to bring about his destruction. Though I’m also told they have an equivalent representation of Don Quixote?? So… the idea of humor injected into Necron, if only to deal with the extreme silliness coming from the Orks is a welcome respite from the grim tragedy the Undead seem to come with. Even though technically they’re NOT undead. Technically… they’re technical. And dead… and yet still alive. (Just like Leonard Cohen! Where my Young Ones fans at??)

-Edward WinterRose is a Warhammer noob, and a 48th level geek steeped in science fiction and fantasy ephemera, and as a result has gotten a bunch of horror lore from both genres despite being too afraid to watch horror movies or videogames by himself. But he still adores Halloween. Go figure.

It’s Your Noobness again. So… I just got word about the new supplements and upgrade kits for the Salamanders and Imperial Fist chapters of the Adeptes Astartes. So by now, we know what that means. Given that we just had some of those Salamanders on our painting tables last week, it’s time for Mr. WinterRose to learn all about em and see what makes them tick.

Now when I covered the Raven Guard and Iron Hands… (MANOS!!!) Ahem. Pardon me. I learned about the Shattered Legions that were part of the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan 5 that broke those two factions so very hard. So, the Salamanders were there with the loyalists who fought alongside them for the Imperium. So we’ll start with them.

Salamanders in my head aren’t the firebreathing elementals that most RPG systems make them out to be. The first image I get is of a very specific salamander in the western marshes of Washington and Oregon. The little fellow has been in a kind of biological arms race with the garter snakes of the region for an evolutionary scaled chunk of time. The salamanders get more poisonous, the snakes get more resistant to the toxin. And nowadays, we have a salamander that is lethal to even touch. 1000 times more deadly than Cyanide.

The little guy is a survivor.

These dragon-green and fire colored space marines have that in common.

Straight up known once as the Dragon Warriors, these guys hail from a volcanic death world, and hold the protection of mankind to be their utmost raison d’etre. Hell, for that matter, these guys even stayed in touch with their families. (LET’S RAISE A FAMILY ON A VOLCANIC PLANET! READY? YOU BETCHA!) But like many jokes, to them it’s not a joke. These fellas are more like a militia than part of the Astartes. These guys are part of their world’s life and councils when they aren’t mobilized for the emperor. And they’ve been the relative GOOD GUYS WITH POWER ARMOR for something like 10 thousand years. So… only more than twice the span of actual human history.

Their primarch, Vulkan, just seemed to appear in a very incarnated god kind of fashion. (Not TOO messianic, yes?) Essentially just FOUND by smiths on a VOLCANIC PLANET and immediately grew into a super blacksmith like Hephaestus personified and crossed with Arthurian myth. He hunted ‘salamanders‘ with the Emperor, who had contests with him in disguise and honorably saved his life. And in pledging his fealty to the Emperor, was made Primarch of the XVIII’th legion. At which point, they served the Imperium REALLY honorably until the Horus Heresy. And they seem to have been so badly decimated there that they only JUST survived extinction. And Vulkan disappeared…

…or he led the remains of the Salamanders for 3 more millennia before heading off, Arthur-like, on some mission of his own and disappeared THEN. History is unclear on these points. He’s apparently also been found again? Between the sources I read, this also seems unclear. From what I get, this chapter of the Space Marines has been somewhat underwritten and stuck in development hell for a while, so things have gotten a bit murky.

The one thing that’s clear is that their habit of self-sacrifice and valour in service of those they are pledged to defend has decimated their numbers over and over again. They’ve never recovered the numbers they had before the Horus Heresy and the Drop Site Massacre. Mostly because they tend to wade right into battle, heedless of their own safety. And while they may not be many, their seemingly suicidal dedication to their fellow man is legend.

They were developed in secret to a large degree. Even more so than usual, by normal standards of the space marine program. Being from a WORLD of blacksmiths, they all make their own armors and weaponry. And of course being from a volcanic world, the whole Nocturne-ian people kind of developed a hyper-melanistic resistance to heat and radiation. These aren’t so much people of color as much as charcoal briquettes and glowing coals for eyes that walk and are generally honorable and selfless to a fault. I understand this has caused some controversy in the past. Cos I’m guessing people didn’t have enough to argue about and decided this was something to troll with. Context, folks. Do the reading, willya?

Honestly… From what I understand of the Salamanders, they’re something of a popular chapter of the marines to play. And I have to say, they’re the ones that have appealed to Your Noobness here the most so far. Nice, considerate, careful folk… Forged in fire… Retain relations with their families… It helps that there’s a kind of selfless Arthurian feel to them as well. One of the top five novel series for me is The Keltiad, by Patricia Kenneally-Morrison. Part of her novels includes going out to a Volcanic planet to find what became of the lost ‘Keltic’ king, Arthur. (If you play Games Workshop games, you’re already used to misspelled stuff. Keltic ought to be no big loss for ya.) Finding his flagship, Prydwen and the four lost treasures of Keltia. The similarities of the Salamanders needing to go out and find Vulkan’s nine treasures before he can return to them as Primarch is similar enough that it hits my buttons. I’d play some of these guys I think. At least there seems to be possibility enough to make a character with enough background to actually RP.

But, let’s get to the Imperial Fists.

First of all… I’m going to giggle to myself in a most immature manner as I internally get all the sophomoric humor out of the way. Internally, mind you. Cos the first thing that comes to mind is “FISTING FOR THE IMPERIUM! WITH FISTS!” And if you’re not sure why that’s funny to me, DON’T Google it.

Okay. Got that out of your system, Mr. WinterRose? Well.. probably not. But let’s continue, shall we?

These guys are one of the founding chapters of the Space Marines. It’s plain to see that they consider themselves the OG Space Marines in comparison to the other chapters. They don’t bark and they don’t drama. They go and do the thing that Marines are meant for and that’s that. Honestly, they’re coming across to me as the Paladin class of the Astartes. If you’re going out on a crusade, they’re the first folks you call up. Odds are you don’t even need to call em. They’re probably already outside on your doorstep; “We heard you had a war you needed to prosecute? We’re ready.” Honest. They went to the Emperor and pretty much went, “We’re your next Space Marine chapter. If you’ll just give us your investiture, we’ll get down to business.” He didn’t need to go find them. They were down for it before the Emperor Pyrrhus knew he needed em. (Yeah, I’m gonna keep calling the emperor that.)

These guys would seem to be stoic zealots and engineered for siege warfare. They’re defenders of the realm, and take it as seriously as most Space Marines take… well anything. Which is to say WAY beyond sensibility. These fellas have specific ideas about what the Imperium of Man should be like, according to the Emperor of Mankind, and they will make that happen, do or die. They are THE Loyalists among loyalists. And they make no bones about it. They’re not stealthy-stealthies. They’re not sneaky. If you want someone to lead a siege or hole against one, they’re your guys. They’re your guys who seem to wade into a battle and work on bringing THEIR idea of the Imperium into reality… WITH FISTS! (Nope… not done yet apparently.)

These guys were pretty much WRACKED with guilt over the Emperor’s fall during the Horus Heresy. Particularly their not QUITE Warmaster, Rogal Dorn. (I’m reading Commander Worf all over this guy. Complete with his Crazy Horse inspired “Today is a good day to die” rhetoric. Played of course by Michael DORN.) Roboute Guilliman, who came up with the Codex Astartes that divided the chapters all up to hold human space, tried to tell Dorn the news of how things were going to be. Dorn’s pretty much “Whatever. I’mma go hunt Horus’ traitors now. Let me know when you cease SUCKING.” And did exactly that. They went off on a crusade and did not do badly at that. But eventually, they get reigned in again and eventually accept the codex. Kinda. They still have DEFINITE IDEAS about how they ought to behave and serve the Emperor’s vision. I get the idea they’re still being the ‘bedrock of the imperium’ for the Emperor’s sake.

They weren’t at Istvaan V with the Shattered Legions, so they were spared the pain of that, but they were with the Emperor when he fell, so to some degree they’ve gone just as slightly insane as the other chapters in the wake of the Horus Heresy. So they just started doing impossible mission after impossible mission in their grief, and nearly drove themselves to extinction.

For that matter, Slaughter Koorland, being the lone survivor of an offensive against Orruks who roundly owned them came back and formed the Deathwatch after causing himself to become Lord Commander of the Imperium and getting killed afterward. So for a bit, the original Imperial Fists were entirely extinct. They were ‘reconstituted’ by some of their secondary chapters later. That job was done well enough that the news Fists went around fisting for the imperium for 9000 years.

There’s a lot of the trappings of self-flagellating monks or penitents from religious dogma. Lots of self punishment. From putting themselves into cold rooms naked to the use of ‘Pain Gloves’. Essentially these guys torture themselves with a glove that makes the rest of them feel as though they were being dipped in molten steel. (“Put your fist into the glove, young Astartes…” I hear, in a paraphrased tone of voice from David Lynch’s ‘Dune’. “What’s in there?” “Pain. And your fist.”) This kind of thing is supposed to keep them sharp and ready for battle cos of how Space Marine organs are supposed to react when subjected to extreme pain conditions. Okay. Sure. WEIRDOS.

And if the history seems a bit unclear here, it is. I’m hoping honestly that the new codexes regarding their backstory and history kind of crystallizes what may just have been ‘drift’ from different writers or variances in the retelling of the canon. Either way, the new reference material is most welcome when it comes to the mushy-ness of the history.

When it comes to the playing of the Imperial Fists, I’d probably give it a pass? These fellas are a bit too Paladin for me. And I use the word Paladin in the D&D sense of the word, in that I’m describing them as fanatically devoted to the Emperor in all the self-destructive ways I wouldn’t want to associate myself with, much less attempt to roleplay. Yeah they’re the most stalwart defenders of the realm. But from guilt and rage, not love of their fellow man or concern like the Salamanders seem to have going. The two seem to be polar opposites of the same coin.

-Edward WinterRose is a 48th level nerd, and is too soft-hearted to even play the Sith or Renegade quest lines in Bioware RPG videogames. So naturally gravitates to the Salamanders.

DOCTOR: Surely you realise something here must be wrong?
ZARGO: Wrong?
DOCTOR: Yes.
CAMILLA: What is, is.
DOCTOR: No. What is, is wrong. Look, societies develop in varying ways. Yours just seems to be sinking back into some sort of primitivism. Wouldn’t you say so?
ROMANA: Oh, yes. In terms of applied socioenergetics, it’s losing its grip on level two development.
DOCTOR: On level two?
ROMANA: A society that evolves backwards must be subject to some even more powerful force restraining it.
DOCTOR: An even more powerful force?
ZARGO: How very mysterious.

-Doctor Who: State of Decay (Nov. 1980)

While I was casting about in research for some article or other, I saw a video link to a piece on YouTube about why Mankind can no longer seem to invent in the 40K game setting. And it hit me in a place that may be the one thing besides cost that put me off about the grimdark setting. That mankind for several tens of thousands of years has plateau-ed and ceased being a species of hope or knowledge. That after the millennia, human knowledge is backsliding. Like my namesake… well, my middle namesake, said in his book, ‘The Demon Haunted World‘,

“…when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

-Carl Sagan

And maybe that hits a little too close to home for me to find enticing or fun in my gaming. Where the sect of humanity that governs high technology is riddled with the tropes and trappings of theology. Not that they’re incorrect in doing so, given that the setting literally has souls and literal ghosts in their machines to deal with. It still hits me a bit like whistling past the junkyard, so to speak. Especially where this seems to be happening in real life to a large degree, as science leaves an under-educated public behind, and superstition rushes in to fill the void.

Have there ever been storylines where Mankind sought to unite with non-chaotic Xenos in order to face the Dark Gods and their twisted daemon children as one? That’d be an endgame to work toward wouldn’t it? One where humanity isn’t one seeming machine out of control, purposed only for killing what is other, brutally holding the line against what it considers corruption, resistance or heresy. How is a soulless mankind without direction any better than it being consumed by Chaos in the first place? (Was the Emperor’s name Pyrrhus by any chance? Serpentor maybe?)

I mean, I’m pretty sure the whole breakdown in human advancement is due to a perpetual state of war. And I tend to like my futures utopian instead of dystopian. Or at the very least, a future that’s trying for something better. In that, I am a lot more Star Trek than Grimdark. Now don’t get me wrong. I see plenty of potential for bravery, heroism and sacrifice. I certainly see all manner of potential for positive change for all the races. But does that hope exist anywhere in Warhammer? Fantasy or 40K? I want to find it. I want the shooting and the punching and battles to mean something. Not just be another paragraph in a long history of the same where the evolution of knowledge has stopped, and mankind is locked in a neverending dark age.

It’s the sort of thing I’ve seen in Sci-Fi and Fantasy hundreds of times. From the Borg to the Daleks to the Galactic Empire to the Cybermen to the Archons to the . Obsession with superiority, with victory, with vengeance. Races that having found an endless and immortal anger with that in the universe that cannot be resolved… progress just stops. Locked into a battle machine, humanity carved out or sealed away forever. Changed into a seething lump of hate that fuels a desire for victory at whatever cost.

Warhammer I think is unique in its presentation of a war-torn dystopia that lasts for the foreeable eternity. That’s THE bad outcome should the heroes of whatever show or movie you’re watching or book you’re reading fail to save the day/planet/galaxy/universe. Bold of them to have STARTED from there. The only thing that comes close I think is Ravenloft. There was another one I can’t remember that was D&D-like as well. One where you START in a world that has fallen to evil.

And maybe that hits a little too close to home for me to find enticing or fun in my gaming. Where the sect of humanity that governs high technology is riddled with the tropes and trappings of theology. Not that they’re incorrect in doing so, given that the setting literally has souls and literal ghosts in their machines to deal with. It still hits me a bit like whistling past the junkyard, so to speak. Especially where this seems to be happening in real life to a large degree, as science leaves an under-educated public behind, and superstition rushes in to fill the void.

Maybe it’s me. I don’t think I can ever match the nihilistic fervor of the characters in the game. And the roleplaying element is really too much a part of any game I tend to play. If I can’t get into character, where’s the fun? I can’t just go on looking for the funny parts and getting my lols over names like Iron Hand, progenitor of the Iron Hands. (Ya know… Manos… ) I suppose the form of play carries the setting. If it’s less RP and more battle encounter set pieces you don’t have to worry OVERLY about the hopelessness of the setting itself. That’s more set dressing than something you have to connect with emotionally.

It’s cheesy. But it’s true. Maybe it needs a bit more research than I’ve done so far. But I wonder what humanity might be able to achieve with the prowess of the Space Elves and the Tau folded in. Legions of Tau Battlesuits, Astartes Armors and Hosts of Aeldari unified in common cause to bring the battle to the Eye of Terror itself, bringing Slaanesh and the other dark gods low. Rekindling the fire of imagination and wonder instead of fear and xenophobia. Not exactly handholding, rainbows and folk music, if you savvy that. But honestly, with the coming holidays, there’s something to be said for peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Or whatever else would unite with us in resistance to evil and the death of hope.

It’d be one hell of a campaign, wouldn’t it?

-Edward SAGAN WinterRose changed his name legally in 2012 right before he had a High Gallifreyan wedding ceremony at DragonCon 2012 in a theater with a pipe organ.  And is often too softhearted to pursue any ‘renegade’, ‘sith’, or ‘so evil he eats live puppies to hear them squeak’ dialogue options in a given RPG.

In all my forays into geekdom, there are of course characters I cannot bear. It happens. Producers of movies, TV shows and comics all had it in mind that you had to have the ‘cute’ character. The one that you can make toys or dolls of to sell to the kids. “Moi-chen-dising!” like the one little gold alien dude said in that one movie. Or at least, something to get the parents to buy a ticket for little Johnny or Sally too.

I can remember the first time I recoiled from something like that. And like all you Mystery Science Theater fans can relate to, it was Sandy Frank I had to blame. It was Battle of the Planets. And it wasn’t the show’s fault. Not really. The show itself had a proud history. In Japan it had been called Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. And it RULED. To me, it was the source of every sentai show that followed. I could go on about this show, but that’s a whole other rant. The point was… it was a BADASS action show in Japan. It was only badass in lowercase letters here in the US. Why?

Because of Star Wars, I think. You see, in 1977, Star Wars was all over the media like most Skaven/Rats are a little bit covered in hair. And the cute little droids were a goldmine. Suddenly any new property in this sudden sci-fi boom HAD to have cute droids in. And when Sandy Frank imported Gatchaman / Battle of the Planets from Japan, we suddenly had a cute robot and his little dog too. They served as the show’s narrators in teeth-grindingly painful little segments they shoehorned in. As well, the younger character Jinpei (Renamed Keyop for Americans) had his abrasive foul-mouthed dialogue butchered into weird birdlike chirps and coos and trills. I suppose it’s a blessing that I never really picked up in my youth that Alan Young (Duck Tales, The Time Machine) voiced both. At the age of 7, I hated them with an incandescent heat only accessible by someone too young to know how to control themselves.

And there were many, MANY other characters like this that followed. And it occurred to me… most of them were incompetent to some degree. Ineffective. They were the ones who typically messed something up that the heroes had to fix or rescue them from. Thankfully they weren’t the MAIN characters. It took us until last year to get one of those. (LOOKING AT YOU, KAZUDA XIONO!) And I’m betting you sat there with me and wondered, “Why the HELL do they put up with that thing??” I’m betting further that the ‘lessons of friendship’ the show usually preached to show why they kept the offending character around were NOT a justification for you. They surely weren’t for me.

So it occurred to me, even further… My guys here have been doing work on Star Wars minis as well as the Warhammer brand. Did they ever find themselves on the paintbrush end of having to do squads or armies of ‘cute’ characters they didn’t like? Aside from one very infamous character, the Gungans were actually pretty capable. “Thay’sn havin’ a grand army. They’sa warriors!” The miniatures exist. There’s even minis for Ewoks. Or as I like to refer to them, CARNIVOROUS MURDERBEARS. Have the guys had to paint any? I went and asked…

Nope. Not a one.

Further still… could you actually use those minis for Xenos in a Warhammer game? Well, the answer likely is no since everything is so very rigidly produced by GW. It’s not a game given to proxies. But consider friendly non-canon games. You and your squad of Astartes and crump-crump-ing along through some jungle moon under the bluish light of its jovian ocean primary… And then the place comes alive with the hooting and growling of an uncountable number of hidden Murderbears. Your HUD isn’t entirely sure, due to the foliage… but there may be less than oh… 5000 of them. And that’s when a log roughly the size and circumference of a city bus slams down on your team leader from 500 feet up in the tree-ceiling somewhere…

You’d nuke them from orbit to be sure, right? I know I would.

NOTE: I asked a pal of mine about this, and he mentioned that there’s some Astartes that have hopped right back up after being stepped on by Titans. So. Advantage: Astartes I think. That said… I have to think god-mode-ing through a horde of Ewoks would HAVE to be some fun.

What other things out there might translate well? Okay, right away? No Snarf. Let’s just be clear about that right now. The old Snarf from the original Thundercats is too awful to be borne in anything. Hell with Snarf. And that goes double for ‘T-BOB’. UGH.

Now… SLIMER on the other hand… There’s an undead agent of Chaos if I ever saw one. You can’t understand him. He leaves a slime trail of other-dimensional goo wherever he goes, or on whatever or whomever he touches. He creates problems wherever he goes. He seems to exist solely feed his maw at others’ expense. Horrific to the point of ridiculousness? Sounds like he’s a creature of Slaanesh, to your Noobness here. But really… let’s get down to business… the elephant in the room. The bane of the battlefield. The sore in the eye. The monkey in the wrench.

Of course we’re talking about Binks. Jar-Jar Binks.

I heard the fellas as they were streaming earlier today talking about Binks. And I remembered my thoughts on him. For me, to some degree anyway, the character was redeemed in the second prequel. He was a political statement from Lucas that many skipped over. He was the doggy ignorant face of the Republic, dooming the future to an endless galactic war. And did you know he survived? Yeah. That’s canon. He ended up, after the events of the original trilogy back on Naboo. Gone from a member of the Galactic Senate to a street performer in Naboo City. For his sins, I guess.

But there’s your agent of Chaos. Seriously. He’s Buster freaking Keaton crossbred with the Gene-Seed of an industrial nuclear disaster. There’s the creature you’d mobilize the Ordo Xenos to eliminate with all speed. They find him huddled in a field with a single meiloorun fruit, whining to himself and beggin’ ya pleasin’ not to be crunchin’ him. But a mere hour later, he’s the only thing left alive amidst the smoking remains of the Space Marines sent to expunge him from existence; their cruiser having plummeted from orbit into the Naboo capital and vaporized most anything within the surrounding 50 miles. He’s imbued with some kind of impenetrable plot armor and the random terrifying energy of every chaotic god you ever heard of. How is he not a Xeno devoted to the Chaos Gods, or an emissary of Slaanesh itself?

Or is it just me?

-Edward WinterRose has never really considered the idea of crossing other fandoms into Warhammer before, but finds it amusing nonetheless.