Can Amazons still work?

You don't really need an explanation. Even the greeks went back and forth about where baby Amazonian women came from.

Maybe the men we died out in the last few years so go they raiding parties. Maybe they just all females. Maybe they're literally invisible or exist in some sort of spirit plane?

Some times the explanation can inform other aspect and lead down interesting paths. Part of the joy of world building is the "what if" mind exercises I think.

"Why is there a tribe of all women?" is more interesting to me than "heh heh, girls with spears" I guess.

Well that's true I think explain in every aspect robs a sense of mystery to the world. Personally I think it's something that's more interesting to leave to the players' imagination

Oh no, the information isn't there for the players, but for you. Maybe they can find it out later, but just considering it may suggest other aspects which can lead to new ideas is all.

Did they go back and forth? Wasn't the reason given if they even bothered that various young males would like try to coax them into letting them join their society and abandon their own? Never saw anything other than that, aside from Greeks who would steal away a particular Amazon.

More importantly do any of you guys think they will make it into the new total war game? I would love me an army of thicc women.

Just make them campy and self-aware.

>Even the greeks went back and forth about where baby Amazonian women came from.

Isn't the canon myth that they're the offspring of Ares and some nymph?

If the developers won't, then the modding community surely will

Oh dear, I see where this pic is going...

Lizardmen don't have penises, they reproduce in a spawning pool.

I've done amazons and/or completely female factions in like five or six separate settings already, each exploring with different themes and aspects around the whole ''amazon warrior woman/tribe'' -trope.

A way to make them interesting is to answer why they even exist in the first place? Martial lifestyle isn't really that suited for (human) women, so the underlying explanation why they exist and how they came to be has to make sense within the laws of the setting's universe.

>And can amazons from species other than humans work?

I don't see why not, if anything a non-human race of all or almost all-female warriors sounds more feasible.

>For example, I've been unable to stop thinking that maybe you could mix elf fluff with some of the Warhammer amazon fluff and create a race of elf-amazons that actually make sense.

A lot of settings portray elves as rather egalitarian, meaning that they have both male and female combatants. Can elvish female fighters be considered ''amazon'' if they have male counterparts that are virtually identical to them, or only if the said female elves have no male counterparts?

>Lizardmen don't have penises

But they do have thick and long tails and tongues

Well, i can clearly see that the guy in the background goes just fine without it.

>cutting off the left breast to help with archery.
This was clearly written by someone who has never loosed an arrow in their life.
Or someone who is unfamiliar with how boobs work.
Its called "binding" which is just the DIY equivalent of a sports bra.

But Skaven do.

>And can amazons from species other than humans work?
Its honestly the best way lore wise for them to work unless everyone at your party is running purely on rule-of-cool storytelling

Personally I like the idea of Amazons (if they are in a setting) to be an offshoot or different species of human that just gives birth to more women than men by a factor of 1:10 and to compensate mother nature simply had the women have overactive thyroid glands on the X chromosome that causes them to grow 6'+

That would cause the necessity for women to take up the dangerous jobs such as battle.

Ultimately, your group decides what will work. Anything can work if your players are willing to work with it.

As for Amazons, I've absolutely used the concept before and it generally goes fine. My favourite way of doing it is making them the descendants of humans who either mated with or mixed their blood with dragons somehow. They're stronger, tougher, and more magical on average, and those with particularly dominant draconic blood may exhibit horns or tails, or be capable of breathing fire - these are pretty rare however and generally inducted into the religious warrior caste as a rule. The original dragon they mixed their blood with was male, and as such their men have much more encompassing mutations. Many don't survive long in the world, and those that do barely resemble humans. Most become hulking draconic monsters that either have to live separately from the rest of their clan or are kept docile through wines and offerings, to be deployed as war machines when necessary. A rare few manage to remain mostly humanoid and fully sapient, and are the setting's equivalent of 4e/5e dragonborn. Contrary to popular belief, males are highly valued and doted upon due to their rarity and the 'purity' of their draconic blood, but Amazon society appears so overwhelmingly female that outsiders tend to assume it must be a misandrist one.

You're expert in mythological civilizations and bronze age archery, user?

Yes, in a campy setting if nothing else, though on a whole it really depends on the type of group you have, and how you play them, all female tribes/races are more than a bit fantastical and as long as they are fine with having outright fantasy elements in your game it shouldn't be a problem. A matriarchal race/tribe would be less fantastical if "realism" is an issue with your group

If I were to do Amazons I'd probably do them as a human subspecies or refluffed orcs. I wouldn't do elves or the like, if only because when I think of amazons I tend to think of stronger and taller than baseline humans. Come to think of it, refluffed goliaths would make good amazons statwise, real good fit actually if I'm remembering their statline correctly.

>Males are incorporeal
huh, I like this, don't know why or how I'd use this but I like this

Can't speak for OP, I like leaving some details vague so I can fill in as the game goes along with what would be more interesting if it becomes relevant to do so

This is also a fun option with the right group

Something I never see with amazons
They should find "manly men" strange and unappealing

Consider how the gender roles are reversed, the Amazons should treat male warriors with humor or contempt, even if they do prove their worth they should be pretty disdainful of the practice considering how its woman's world

No, but I've done a fair bit of archery.
Sports bras work just fine for holding tits in, and the ancient equivalent was just wrapping some cloth around your chest.
And yeah I know that the greeks wrote them that way I'm pretty sure it was the ancient writer sneaking his magical realm into the story

Considering the stuff on /d/ and Zeus's own exploits one breasted warrior women isn't that strange

>incorporeal males
do they talk? are they birthed by amazon mothers?
or are they just, like, some god-stones somewhere that you pray to and get a baby?

>They should find "manly men" strange and unappealing

They wouldn't be mammals then I reckon

Really chauvinist amazons are another option for making them funny.

Naw, they're mammals, just with a few biological quirks that honestly aren't that strange when compared to the rest of the animal kingdoms

>chauvinist amazons
I like this idea
>(Slaps the fighter's ass)
>You trying to dress like a woman sweatmeat?
>You can dress up in armor all you want but we both know you don't have the tits for this
>(Follows with a cup check)
>Why don't you let me empty you out so you can take a nap like a good man?

I prefer a more magical explaination.
They're the entourage of some goddess, straddling the line between human and demi-god. If they leave their sacred mountain to go adventuring they can never come back.

>They're the entourage of some goddess, straddling the line between human and demi-god.
Also an adequate explaination if you want to go more magical
I just like low fantasy

>take a nap
more like cook the food
your example is hot but they wouldn't just be patronizing to eyecandy for a gfd scenario
they'd be sexist all the time, ignoring male store owners when there's a woman working there, disproportionally give credit to female party members after a fight and demand the guys clean the gear during downtime

>Can't go into battle with your cock hanging out.
>You should stay home and keep yourself ready to give me a backrub when I come home.
I also like the idea that they would carry children the same way a deer would IE it doesn't inconvenience them too much, maybe even giving birth after a five months or so and miscarriages are fairly common

Does it count as low fantasy to have diverging paths of human evolution? I always associate that with mimicking real life historical settings, just with some subtle magic thrown in.

>they'd be sexist all the time, ignoring male store owners when there's a woman working there, disproportionally give credit to female party members after a fight and demand the guys clean the gear during downtime
That makes sense, considering how they would be old timey sexist

BY HAVING MAGIC THAT YOU AIN'T GOTTA EXPLAIN THE SHIT OF, YES

>Does it count as low fantasy to have diverging paths of human evolution?
Yes, its a mundane explanation for extraordinary occurrences. And considering how different hominid strains existed its not even that far off the mark
All "low fantasy" means is a fictional setting with a small amount of paranormal stuff.

Have them be slightly viking-esque. With the winter being the time for raids and turf wars and the summer being the time for farm stuff and carrying infants to childbirth. So they don't have to travel and fight while expecting.

I think high magic is a good move for amazons, since they're a sexy archetype and need to be permitted some impracticalities with their attire.

I think female dominant primitive societies can work well if they are egg laying.

The problem with women on the battlefront is pregnancy, and the problem with not being pregnant is thats not how you get babies.

>impracticalities with their attire.
Not all armor needs to be fully covering or symmetrical

Also Amazons are not meant to be a major power player. They are a backwards tribe out in the jungle. So if their way of life seems like it wouldn't be the most efficient or practical way to go about things...guess what bucko, its not and thats why they aren't a powerful people.

They could just be one of those species that holds on to the embryo in an extremely early stage of pregnancy until they decide to go through with it properly.

Amazon societies are never portrayed as strong empires. Usually nature itself protects their borders for them. They just go out to raid, having no need for an organized defense force.
A prospective mother can simply skip one or two years of raiding in order to breed and be back at it after that.

Amazons are as minor as minor factions get, so I wouldn't really expect them to show up beyond random events.

The fact that they've actually got a blood bowl team does mean you might get to see some modern models eventually, but warhammer 'zons are lean and creepy tribals rather than pulpy tittymonsters.

Aside from raiding Amazons don't come into contact with too many people IE they usually choose the time and place of battle.

Also if we're diverging from human biology to say that their females are larger and stronger than the males whats to say that they don't give birth to normal sized babies that just grow to a massive size (if they are female)

So a pregnant amazon warrior wouldn't look pregnant unless she was getting ready to pop in which case she shouldn't be anywhere near battle, but a few months in even and she will just try and avoid getting hit in the gut (hence their reliance on ranged weaponry like javelins and bows)

But they're also very protagonist associated. They're the option for having female adventurers in a world with down-to-earth gender roles otherwise. You want them to compete with their male colleagues on equal footing.

How massive are you imagining these women?
Are they as big to men as men are to women normally?

>* Elves: They tend to be pretty feminine anyway, and are usually the "higher (magi)tech" race of the setting, so being all female and reproducing through magic actually makes sense for them. Or they could just be a degenerate offshoot race, ala Warhammer's Amazons.
Interesting idea but I would rather just have them use some form of virgin birth like plant lice that doesn't require males in the first place.

Amazons didn't exist.

>Something most modern depictions ignore and probably just as well.
Because women don't actually need to cut off their breast to fire arrows.

>Or someone who is unfamiliar with how boobs work.
They we're written by Greek men as a form of porn stories.

You could use ants for that. Have 1 queen birth hundreds of daughters and 1-3 males in her entire lifetime and have only 1 male for each ant-azon tribe. He most likely would need to be alive due to the large size of ant-azons (because the body is too warm for sperm to survive in, this is why the balls dangle outside it) and produce more sperm for children but you can just have them follow ant breeding and have him impregnate the queen once and then die from natural causes.

>They're the option for having female adventurers in a world with down-to-earth gender roles otherwise
Crossbow archers, scouts, alchemists, healers, duelists if you must have a melee option.

All of these can be occupied by female adventurers and thats not even getting into settings with magic

>why would anyone grip a gun that way? It's completely unrealistic.
>And scarifications? Self-mutilation for no benefit? Ridiculous.

I agree that it was probably the author's magical realm, or some traveller's tall tale "they're so badass they cut themselves", but that doesn't mean we should immediately throw it to the garbage bin.

>How massive are you imagining these women?
Probably around 6' to 6'8''
Nothing outside of the realm of normal humans. Just on average larger. Kind of like Danes.
Their men would just be average sized.

>They we're written by Greek men as a form of porn stories.
Fucking this.

Not sure, I DON'T like the idea the amazons don't know about them though for some reason
Hm..., now that I'm thinking about it, I'd probably have a set up where their priestesses/druids interact with them the most, reproduction done primarily by "fertility" rituals, but any amazon can do them by herself, just with less of a chance of success. The spirit are male amazons, and most of the time they're "born" the mother just assumes the pregnancy didn't take. On a side note, half-amazon females take after the mother, being tall, built, muscular girls, male half-amazons tend to be small and androgynous, but they're very good at magic due to being part spirit

Not throwing the idea into the garbage bin.
Just saying its ridiculous to think women need to cut a boob off to practice archery.

There's a ton of cultures where a female can assume those roles. Not the vast majority of women, maybe, but some subcaste or window or only child or crosssdresser or whatever is always possible.

You can only have so many tomboys unsatisfied with the role society ordained for them and running away to become adventurers before people start rolling their eyes.

-Use "gargareans" as their all-male slaves

-Use the "Myrina queen coming from Lybia" portion of one of the amazon myths to make them akin to dahomey amazons. Perhaps even including the guns.

-The above may include the "fought atlanteans" bit referenced as battling high elves.

-Diodorus also mentions that the Amazons of Queen Myrina used the skins of gigantic snakes, from Libya, to protect themselves at battle. Later Queen Myrine led her Amazons to victory against the Gorgons. After the battle against the Gorgons, Myrina accorded a funeral to her fallen comrades on three pyres and raised up three great heaps of earth as tombs, which are called "Amazon Mounds".

-Wait... Gorgons were said by some to be from Lybia. Might the snake skins be from them? Could the gorgon masks be used by amazons? It's not like greek mythology has a canon.

pastebin.com/DtKQ6iQt
>Greek Fantasy Tips and Resources

True, but it's not ridiculous to imagine some women that have, in the same way that red goes faster, or fiddling with your sights make the bullets hurt more.

>tomboys unsatisfied with the role society ordained for them and running away to become adventurers
Unless its not that strange in the setting.
If the setting has traditional gender roles but ones that are not heavily reinforced then it wouldn't be the "rebellious tomboy unsatisfied with her life" trope. It would just be a character with a reason to strike out, make some cash, meet interesting people

Hell, I had a player in such a setting and her character's goal was to bag a prince

>Using 40K as your litmus test for what is ridiculous or not

Where did the "amazons as feral low tech tribe" thing come from?

The GW ones are obviously doing a double meaning thing by having them be Amazons and be from the worlds equivalent of the Amazon but I know nothing GW does is original.

I doesn't originate from 40k, you dunderhead.

Well they're mythology from the classical era, so their original incarnation was already pretty low-tech.

But thats where most people know it from you dummy

Good idea
But if she's carrying for only a few months she's still on raiding duty because due to her size the gut isn't that cumbersome.

Besides. Battle and blood are good for strengthening daughters in the womb

I like how IK does its mutant pirate amazons.

Honestly, I was only giving an alternative because I think mutant deer pregnancies are fucking weird.

Why are amazons always more or less dressed in furs, and in general more primitive? To me one opposite direction of making them magical, is overcoming the advantage men have in combat through technological gaps. If they're fighting men with 10th century chain or scale, the amazons should be using crossbows and transitional plate. When men start using plate armor, amazons use primitive guns. When the men use muskets, amazons use trapdoor guns.

There's still a bit of a difference between Mycenaean Greece and feral tribe though.

Well, yeah it was a myth by them, not about them
and it wasn't about some powerful rival force, it was about a backward group of wood people that did everything topsy-turvy

...

Because they're barbarians "invented" to be contrasted with good Greek warriors who left their women at home.

...

...

I'm being a little more nebulous with the term amazon, as in meaning matriarchal groups of only women not the literal amazons from mythology.

...

I see, so you're implying amazon growth isn't genetic or magical, but a result of a unique fungus that grows at the home of the amazons, whose spores cause women to grow strong and men to grow meek.

they at least had some official rules, norsca didnt and norsca made it in.

Im not exactly holding my breath for amazons but at this point anything is possible.

the same is true fro amazons actually.
they found an old ones artefact that lets them spawn like lizards, at least thats the implication of how they work

>amazon conquest consists of sacking a village and then seeding it with spores, so next year it will be part of their territory

>cutting off the left breast to help with archery.
This was bullshit even in the Ancient Greek days.
It never pops up in the actual myths and artwork at all.

The most common version is that men existed in Amazonian society, they were just second class citizens like a bizzaro Athens.

I like the version where they rape sea men and give their male offspring to a god in exchange for protection. It creates an extra interesting society, the myrmidons or whatever, an all-male counterpart to the amazons and it explains how the amazons are able to fight off invasions.

If you sacrifice to have protection, you shouldn't need a mirror society of males.

This particular god wasn't interested in blood sacrifice, he took the infants and trained them as blacksmiths to man his forge

What about the duck?

What that other user said with the norsca. The second game doesnot have a lot of factions to chose from and lustria is pretty empty. What could e expect other Tomb kings and araby? Sea dogs?

No, I mean, it makes no sense to have them sacrificed (sent to serve the god) only to come back when there's a crisis.
At that point the only protection the god provides is sending back what he took in the first place.

The god doesn't use the boys as protection, he uses his magic god powers. Besides, they have a whole culture about boys not being part of their society, even if that's how it worked they'd probably prefer it over having them around.

Well really the differences between men and women are that
>men
Sheer strength
Eyes more suited to tunnel vision
>women
Less neurons/synapses in brain
Eyes favor more peripheral vision

Knowing that evolution causes animals to adapt and change as a species over time, what if the environmental factors that caused men to be the more dominant role were just completely flipped?
>lazor chef
God I wish that were me

It doesn't affect birds, otherwise they'd die out.

>and men to grow meek
Why do people always have to slap this shit onto amazons.

Heracles and Theseus were the sorts of guys they wanted, not effete doormats.

You sounds like a real mythology buff.