Last Thread: docs.google.com
TL;DR: An alternate Warhammer Fantasy setting inspired by oriental imagery rather than Germanic/European. The centerpiece is an equivalent of the Empire based on the Ottoman, rather than Holy Roman one.
Thread topic: expanding the giant factions.
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>Thread topic: expanding the giant factions.
Cloud giants: Live in mountains. Their ancestral home is a Mount Olympus-analog. Had an advanced civilization of cloud dwelling philosopher-mages who would change their shape to have sex with humans for the lolz. Their offspring are the ogres and lesser giants. Some humans claim to have traces of cloud giant ancestry, being born unusually tall, strong and/or with a weird complexion not normally found in humans (silvery skin, golden hair, purple eyes etc.).
Today their empire is brought low after they began an endless fight with their fire giant cousins over a prophecy. In the first batch of ideas this prophecy was about the end of the world, with the cloud giants wanting the world to survive and the fire giants wanting it to end. That does not make a lot of sense - why would the fire giants want the world to end? It would be more sensible if the prophecy entailed some change of significance to the giants at large, and now they are fighting over how to handle it.
The prophecy predicted the end of the world. It also had vague instructions on how to prevent it. Disagreements over how to interpret these instructions led to the war. The became the fire giants, forced out of the mountains and underground as the cloud giants threw thunderbolts at them. In their underground lairs they plotted and built, making weapons of great destruction. They mated with foul things underground, creating the lesser giants known as cyclopes, imperfect copies of their own form.
The cloud giants meanwhile went back to their decadent ways, consumed by the rush of victory to the point of neglecting the prophecy. Then BOOM! Mount Olympus blows up in a super-volcano catastrophe. Surprise, the fire giants created a great volcano under the mountain and blew it to hell to get back on their former brothers. Now the cloud giants scatter, trying to find new mountains to live on and come into contact with the 'lesser' races.
>That does not make a lot of sense - why would the fire giants want the world to end?
The fire giants have a different religious/cultural philosophy. The fire giants believe that the world is cyclical. "End of the world" is a misnomer, rather it is the end of an age and the ushering in of a new one. The End, while full of upheaval and change, is spiritual and metaphorical in nature rather than physical. To the fire giants, the other giant races attempts to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy is nothing short of a blasphemous perversion of the natural order.
>pictured: Fire giant and cyclopes
The fire giants got super bitter after being expelled from !Olympus. The cloud giants had used magical thunderbolts to turn the tide in their favor. Imagine a spear that, when thrown, turns into a lightning-bolt before magically teleporting back to the thrower's hand. That's how the cloud giants won the war. Now the fire giants were really mad, and vowed to make better weapons that would end the cloud giants.
Now they set out to forge their new underground homes into great factories. They found that the world was populated by a number of intelligent races, something no one on !Olympus had realized. They bullied these lesser creatures to work for them, interbreeding and shaping them into forms that would be useful for them. Here we have a convenient origin for monsters and stuff. Their favorite creations were the cyclopes, who looked kind of like the giants and who were entrusted with some of the most important work.
The fire giants made all kind of weird and advanced weapons. Eventually thought they came up with their 'best' idea: a terrible explosive weapon that would use the power of the earth's burning core to blow up the cloud giants' mountain. So consumed with vengeance and spite were the fire giants that they did not care that they would destroy their own former home too - it was enough that it was denied to the cloud giants.
(this motive of spite over reason ties in with the Lemurians - maybe the spiteful Lemurian god is a fire giant?)
But the fire giants had miscalculated. Their weapon did destroy !Olympus, but it also caused chain eruptions all over the world - the first volcanoes. Lava flowed from the core of the earth and flooded the fire giants' own underground homes, forcing them to flee in panic. To top if off their slaves rebelled, fleeing and fighting their way to the earth's surface. Now the fire giants were as scattered as the cloud giants.
I haven't been here much since the first thread, but I thought the fire giant/frost giant schism was over issues of the role of emotion in life? Frost giants believe in stoicism and focus, fire giants believe in expression and personal fulfillment?
We should really have the next topic about the Lemurians. Are they still snake-roach people?
I'm reluctant to include the roach part because I find it hard to disassociate from (and am concerned it might bring back) the /pol/ shitposts. Snakepeople are a solid trope, I say stick with those.
>I'm reluctant to include the roach part because I find it hard to disassociate from (and am concerned it might bring back) the /pol/ shitposts. Snakepeople are a solid trope, I say stick with those.
I think vermin people hybrids bring something new to the table. Snake-men have been around since Conan, lets make something new and interesting.
Also on a principal level I feel sad that we should give up on something good because /pol/.
So Janessaries are this settings version of space marines right?
Why don't we take the best of both worlds and make them centipede people?
>So Janessaries are this settings version of space marines right?
Nah bru, that's Warhams 40K. This is fantasy.
I would like to see a medieval holy roman empire instead a reinaissence one
>Why don't we take the best of both worlds and make them centipede people?
Or 'undefinable cross of all disgusting creepy-crawlies'. That could work.
If you need any help from a Turk user let me know.
Honestly, /pol/ memes about everything, trying to walk eggshells around that autismo-simulator is impossible.
If half-snake half-roaches work go for it.
Ah, I see. Reading warhammer makes me automatically think of 40k. Isn't age of sigmar the name of warhammer fantasy these days?
>Isn't age of sigmar the name of warhammer fantasy these days?
Yes it is, but you're better off not mentioning Age of Sigmar (AoS) round these here parts. AoS rebooted the setting completely and made it wildly different, something that generated quite a lot of Skub. This thread is taking its inspiration from the old edition of Warhams, before everything got turned to shit
It would be pretty funny to speculate about Age of Salil at some point.
Let's start by finishing this thing first.
So do the valkyries still fit into the lore from last thread or no?
Got a TL;DR?
>Valkyries are actually dryads formed from fruit the giants cultivate, creating a race of warrior women like the Amazons in the old Warhammer game to serve as the frontline infantry in Giant armies so they don't have to fight as often. Each faction of giants feed their valkyrie trees different fertilizer and produce different valkyries.
Are the Vanara led by a magical orangutan skeleton named Lord Ook?
>So do the valkyries still fit into the lore from last thread or no?
Valkyries in a mid-eastern inspired setting seem out of place.
Do we want a tight focus or is it the kitchen sink approach here?
Well, the giants are intended to be Norse mythology inspired, but user's suggestion for valkyries isn't really that either.
>Well, the giants are intended to be Norse mythology inspired, but user's suggestion for valkyries isn't really that either.
The idea of them being born from a tree echos Scandinavian myth of the first man and woman, Ask and Embla, being made by the gods from a tree. This along with calling them Valkyries give them a strong viking theme.
If we want something closer to actual mid-eastern amazons the Scythians would be more in keeping with theme. They were an eurasian nomad people around the time of ancient Greece, with woman warriors as one of their distinctive cultural traits.
Simply make them as the Greeks presented them; wild horse nomad amazons with crazy weapons and fashion sense.
It isn't entirely Middle Eastern, the main focus is. Just like the main focus of WHFB was Germany/Holy Roman Empire: it's a big part but not the exclusive source. Same thing with the !Skaven.
>I'm reluctant to include the roach part because I find it hard to disassociate from (and am concerned it might bring back) the /pol/ shitposts
Wise decision.
>Also on a principal level I feel sad that we should give up on something good because /pol/.
Yeah, but we've had to give up a lot of good things on Veeky Forums because /pol/.
Frankly I find that stupid that we can't use something because of /pol/ cooties. And Snakemen feel too generic to be menacing. Why can't they be a chaotic mix of things?
If we can't have things that aren't middle Eastern, that means tossing out Jade Kings, Orc crusaders, giants, and Monkeymen.
>Frankly I find that stupid that we can't use something because of /pol/ cooties.
We're free to use it. We just all explicitly understand that it's going to be a large signal-flare calling /pol/tards from all across the board to converge in this thread to post epic MSPaints about turkroaches that will clog the thread and ruin the flow of discussion, causing the project to flounder and collapse.
A giant wooden ship, rolling on land with giant wheels, crescent and moon waving in the wind, statue of the Conqueror on it's mast as a protection shrine, its giant cannons roar as thunder, blowing up and crushing all of its enemies.
Steam tanks?
>turkroaches
That's why it isn't exclusively roach, and fused with snakes.
The project seems to be dying already from lack of input. And /pol/ hasn't touched this topic for two threads already.
Of course they are, you beautiful bastard
...
Once again, thread's dead. Where is everyone?
On the topic of the monkey lizard men, i think the preist caste should be lower than the monkey kings but in reality have more sway than a king
So that way you can still have the thousand kingdom feel and have more of a "your guys" feel
Maybe their could be some type of schism in the preist caste like the hinduism vs buddhism fights in ancient india
There should also be factions for Japan, China, India, Arabia, Central Asia (especially with the ties the Ottomans have there), and Mongolia. Although the Mongols and Central Asians can be rolled together as tent nomads.
>China
Jade Kings
>India
Monkeymen.
>Japan
Still nippon
Shit thats right
We need an arabia
>Had an advanced civilization of cloud dwelling philosopher-mages who would change their shape to have sex with humans for the lolz.
Cringe
First post, thread closed.
It's this warhammer's version of Bretonnia.
I believed we already agreed on indo greeks for bretonnia
Then we switched to Arabia.
I think you will find what we 'agree' on doesn't mean piss until someone writes a a proper backstory and puts it in the google doc.
Heres my argument for Greek. Making them Arabia makes them the Empire without Guns. The Arabs don't have the recognisable elite warrior culture that is needed for the Brettonia style. They also don't have a well established societal structure.
Making them Greek gives them an elite warrior culture, while also moving them noticeably away from the empire's aesthetic and tactics. Having them be Spartan/Greek creates the social classes that Brettonia needs to be different from the Empire, it even has Helots to fit in for peasants. Finally, Hoplites look better than Arab desert cav.
You're thinking of a 'real life' Arabia. This isn't what was proposed. What was proposed was the fairy tale 'ARABIAN NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHTS' Arabia with flying carpets, djinn, nondescript sultans, a super fantasy version that is backwards, primitive, but still all magical and essentially given carte blanche to make Arabia anyway you want.
Want magic carpet cavalry bolstered by the 40 Thieves? Go ahead. Want magic rings that summon super powerful warriors? No prob.
Still, the issue isn't so much as selling me on it as it is to write some fluff for it. Whoever writes first gets it, so if you want Greek Brettonians get on it.
Maybe this concept just isn't as good as you'd thought.
>The Arabs don't have the recognisable elite warrior culture that is needed for the Brettonia style.
Egyptian mamluks.
>Warrior-aristocracy
>Code of chivalry
>Feudal society
>Fucking loved cavalry charges
I didn't make this. I just got pulled in by the enthusiasm in the second thread. Motivated me to make the Jade Kings. Now? Seems like I'm the only continuously here. Guess Veeky Forums just can't get shit done like it used to.
>I didn't make this. I just got pulled in by the enthusiasm in the second thread. Motivated me to make the Jade Kings. Now? Seems like I'm the only continuously here. Guess Veeky Forums just can't get shit done like it used to.
Enthusiasm comes in ebbs and bursts. The Google Doc was a good start, fine work on the Jade Kings btw, now we just need to get an outline somewhat agreed upon. These things take time and discussion.
I really like the Jade Kings. Reminds me of that Tomb of the Dragon Emperor movie. I like to think the battles between kings looks just like
youtu.be
Not big on it, honestly. Feels like stepping on the toes of the cloud giants' djinn allies.
Mamluks are good, what happened to the Graeco-Bactrian idea? Huge culture of heavy cavalry, a (probably) 2 tier society of Greekified upper class and largely nativist lower class, interesting fusions of Indian and Grecian architecture and mythology.
I mean check this guy out, classical greek art style depiction of buddha, pretty cool.
Aren’t they Nordic though?
The God-Emperor himself is also Anatolian (Turkish)
Greeks also make sense because they can be influenced by one the cloud giants like how bretonnia was influenced by the wood elves
You should consider order in the Empire as being the secular force of the Palace and the State and the Chaos as Islam.
Ottomans always, ALWAYS, (never mind the edgy religious nutjobs in modern Turkey) kept the Islam under their control and tamed it as a wild beast.
So the religious muslim leaders among the peasents would be those extremist Chaos people trying to make shit and rile people up while the State always acts as the calm, official and order position.
So, like, do you use the warhammer fantasy races but with ottoman era political views or do you use mythological creatures from the ottoman empire/people they interacted with as stand-ins for the warhammer fantasy races?
Maybe you should real the damn thread, /pol/ poster.
>Islam is chaos and the Ottoman state was essentially secular
Not really correct though is it?
>/pol/ poster.
Sorry but what was /pol/ in my post?
I think people just get defensive, interpreting things in the most negative way because they are so tired of the /pol/ posters.
Yes and no, the medieval state's relationship with religion was too different to be encapsulated in a simple scale of less-or-more secular. After the fall of Constantinople the Sultan set himself up as the legitimate patron of Christianity in the east (the Sultan of Rum), most likely to lay claim to the former Roman lands. After the conquest of Egypt, the Sultan's power was extended to cover religious aspects in the role of caliph, most likely to preempt any doubt about who had the religious authority in the Empire.
But all that's Veeky Forums talk. Let's focus on the fantasy.
yeah that kind of does depend on rulers moment in life, religion was used to get rid of siblings wifes, enemies inside the empire. On the flip side I don't even know what harem goverment times should qualify as. That is some borderline melekith mother stuff.
There's also the fact that the Empire is really a very specific kind of reflection of the Holy Roman Empire, which is equal parts glorified and mocked (by highlighting grimdark elements), so even if the actual Ottoman Empire wasn't always so fanatical this one might be moreso because Warhammer is still fundamentally about a scary, bad world
I don't know my man, an absolut despotic monarchy, where if you do something wrong your being sent a cord. If your male and son of sultan, from the moment of your conception your in a state of war with brothers, and their mothers. When you hit adulthood you have to fight with your brothers, but if your too good and too efficient you end up like poor Mustafa. When your father is dead/killed and your on your throne, you have to deal with your mother, after killing all non disabled siblings of course, and when you get wife/wifes, you have the whole harem wars on top of your heads. And because your mother will always have 20-30years of xp on you, she will, if she wants to, mess with your budget, mess with the grain coming from egypt etcAnd then you have janissaries that go rebel at the drop of the hat. It is just as brutal, probably more brutal, then anything happened in the habsburg court.
In a way this is high elfs court pre Melekith going all dark elf rebelion.
The Dark Elves are more of a grimdark version of Sparta (to mirror the High Elves' idealized Athenian Atlantis shtick) than Ottoman
High elves ally with humans, occasionally dwarfs, alongside their dragon and eagle companions. Giants can have more than one non-giant race to serve them.
Hello everyone, I'm new to the thred so I might very well go overboard, feel free to ignore my ramblings if they are off-topic (I'll learn!).
So I read the document, and it seems you don't really know what to do with Chaos?
It seems obvious to me that being barbarians bringers of war and pestilence they should be those who did so to the Muslims in the real world: Mongols and Timurids.
Western Europe thought Tamerlane was some kind of magical Christian warrior from the East, due to the crusader-like zeal he had fighting the Muslim world. Obviously this wasn't the case, he was a Turco-Mongol-Persian raider.
Mutated Not-Mongols coming from the great Not-Syberian wastes could be Centaurs.
The Dark Pilgrimage is what humans do to pledge allegiance to the Dark God(s) of Hooves. You start it with two legs and end it with four.
They may be the cause of the downfall of Cathay.
I'm aware this may seem closer to Beastmen, but I suggest making the main Chaos faction mounted raiders, and Centaurs seem like a nice twist.
They are Barbarians that come from the wastes, they have a different faith than not-Islam, and in the real world they really were a thorn in many Caliphs' sides.
The problem we have with Chaos is that the hole in space time that lets Chaos into the world is in Central/South !Africa, so that really stumps us as to what can come from there.
Mongols can certainly fill some sort of Beastman/Dragon Ogre niche but that's only a small part of what should be a massive horde
Just so I understand the mechanics of this, is there a reason the gate to the Chaos Realm has to be in the South?
In regular Warhams it was in the north, so here it is in the south. Which is really not much of a reason.
Because the giants use the poles as the Vortex to draw magic back out of the world.
So the fire giants seem to have the most child races and the cloud giants have the best human relations
What do the frost giants have?
What do they want?
Keep Chaos from murderfuckimg the planet. And those fartbag fire giants away from all the delicate ley lines that keep the Vortex functioning
A sensible objective.
Im the guy who wrote up the Sanguine Holdfast, so I don't want to dominate the writing. Mainly its because I wanted the Brettonian lance charge being mirrored by this worlds Phalanx. Also, there miht be a little too much overlap with the Empire's magical shtick and the brets with the Arabian Knights idea. But hey, just my two cents.
I know the mamluks work, but they are a little too similar to the Brets with their cavalry obsession. I just prefer the shake up of the factions with their focus. Infantry instead of cavalry being the defining feature.
Check out the Cataphracts of the Byzantine Empire. Totally Bretonia style warriors.
Not Macedonian Companions?
>I know the mamluks work, but they are a little too similar to the Brets with their cavalry obsession.
But the Mamluks were so badass...
>Imma slice a rock
>Imma stab a bucket
>IMMA SPEW FIRE EVERYWHERE. MY STICK SPEWS FIRE, MY ARMS SPEW FIRE, MY HORSE SPEWS FIRE, EVEN MY HELMET SPEWS FIRE. FIRE GAME MOTHERFUCKERS
Flamethrower wielding Mamluks?
I doubt that's what it is
Probably not, but it’s a concept worth exploring.
You are missing my point. I don't think taking Brettonia and making them exactly the same, but with scale armour instead of plate is good. Making them heavy infantry makes them different from WHF. I simply think having them be too similar to the Brets is not good story writing.
Does the Empire get a flying carpet corps?
That’s more Arabian Nights than Ottoman. But I like it anyways. I don’t see any problems with mixing influences up a bit really. The Empire was basically an amalgamation of all of northern Europe with sprinkles of eastern Europe and what have you.
Araby already has those in Warhammer, you know.
So how is the empire run?
Or didn't you guys get to that yet?
Biji biji rojava
Everyone is still debating what factions should be what. Got some backstory for the Empire but not much else. I don't think we even have name for ottomanAltdorf
So, is "Bow of the Prophet" going to be based directly off any particular WHFB core system, or do we have carte blanche to mod the base rules?
No one has even touched the crunch yet. If you wanna do it, go ahead. Thread's need new life in them.
I'm down. Been browsing all the systems, and I feel that cribbing some stuff from 3rd ed (which had rules for war wagon laagers, hand grenades, 2-man cannon teams, etc) would be a good start too.
Naval combat would also be important too, especially for a not-Lepanto.
Whichever you think covers all out bases, as we are still figuring out what those bases are.
Oh, lorewise, I feel like notIndia could definitely have a lot more than just the Monkey Warrior replacement for Lizardmen. After all, India wasn't India until 1947, and was divided between the Mughal Empire (at the first Battle of Panipat [there were *three*, and in the 3rd battle, the Aghans used camel-mounted swivel-cannons] Babur used guns and artillery handled by Ottoman mercenaries), the Marathas, the Panjabi kingdoms (fantasy Gurkhas would be boss), and Mysoreans (and Mysorean Rockets were the "inspiration" [read: reverse-engineered] for the Congreve Rocket, aka "The Rocket's Red Glare]). The Mysoreans were particularly notable, not only for cast-iron rockets, but for experimenting with all sorts of exotic warheads (including incendiaries, "cutter" bladed rockets, two-man portable rockets, etc) that they sold at the eponymous "Galaxy Market."
And of course, you had the Portugese hanging out in Goa.
From a fantasy perspective, WHFB had tiger-men in the 6e Beastmen book fluff, which were known to protect as well as attack human villages. The Ogre Kingdoms book had the Brahmir Statue as an elephant deity idol that caused abject terror in the servants of Chaos. If you want to co-opt other mythology, Hindu texts also refer to airships/sky-chariots called Vimanas (whether they ascend in pillars of fire, or fly like mechanical birds), giving you an excuse for an "airship pirate" faction.
Here's something else to have Chaos be represented by Horse nomads.
Tengrism can be very easily adopted to chaos worship. Tengrism worships the eternal sky, and a important sub-set of that is worship of the wind. In the middle of the steppes between Cathay and the Empire is the altar to the sky-father (chaos undivided), and out from it ride the chaos warriors of the four winds.
These not-tengri worshippers see walls and other man-made boundaries as an affront to the endless steppes, giving them a religious reason to attack west into the Empire, and East into Cathay.
That guy has a huge onion hat.