The strange tale of the cowardly Orruk & other curious creatures...

[JPjr]

I've been thinking again (🚨 DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER 🚨) about the portrayal of different sentient species in the mortal realms and how the grand scale of the setting promises much in the way of allowing all different kinds of things to exist but maybe hasn't exactly delivered on that yet*. Every now and then in a story there's something in the background that adds a bit of colour, Orruk traders things like that, but I haven't read much which has put those kind of things front and centre of any stories.

So I wondered if that's a case of the writers playing it safe as they build the setting or do they/GW/BL actually have a pretty fair reading of the audience and what they expect and want. So as that putative audience I wondered how closely YOU like your fantasy races to cleave to established tropes? 

Would the appearance of a cowardly or philosophical Orruk as the focus of a story rub you up the wrong way? What about a boorish, fat Aelf whose character is as stained as the greasy bib he's constantly dribbling rhinox rib sauce down? Or how about a happy go lucky Duardin who enjoys a nice clean shave and forgets debts like a drunk bookie?

Obviously these examples are pretty unsubtle and just reflexively subverting tropes and archetypes can be as lazy a gimmick as following them, but you get the idea. Do you like your Dwarves dour and Orcs 'orrible as that makes each race distinct or do you like the idea that within each race there's as wide a spectrum of characters and personalities as we allow human protagonists to have?

This post is going to sink like a stone, isn't it... errrr what about those Slaanesh mortals, eh!?

 

 

 

 

 

* I'm really talking fiction/lore here rather than in-game as such, as fun as they are wargames are a fairly blunt hammer for exploring a world so it's inevitable that there's less room for nuance there.

[Gaz Taylor]

22 minutes ago, JPjr said:

So I wondered if that's a case of the writers playing it safe as they build the setting or do they/GW/BL actually have a pretty fair reading of the audience and what they expect and want. So as that putative audience I wondered how closely YOU like your fantasy races to cleave to established tropes? 

Would the appearance of a cowardly or philosophical Orruk as the focus of a story rub you up the wrong way? What about a boorish, fat Aelf whose character is as stained as the greasy bib he's constantly dribbling rhinox rib sauce down? Or how about a happy go lucky Duardin who enjoys a nice clean shave and forgets debts like a drunk bookie?

Obviously these examples are pretty unsubtle and just reflexively subverting tropes and archetypes can be as lazy a gimmick as following them, but you get the idea. Do you like your Dwarves dour and Orcs 'orrible as that makes each race distinct or do you like the idea that within each race there's as wide a spectrum of characters and personalities as we allow human protagonists to have?

I don't think I would have an issue with it to be honest. GW have been trying to shift away from the 'old' points of view with many of the races and I think that audiences are more open to such things if it makes the story good. I think just introducing those types of characters for the sake of it, isn't a good idea though.

[Overread]

I think its clear when one reads the earlier and latter Black Library books that the setting itself has gone through a fair bit of its own changes. Honestly I wish the Age of Sigmar was the first age because the lore as we get it is more akin to first age lore than what one might expect from a third age where one would expect most of the worlds rules and structure to be pretty solid. 

 

Still that aside I think there are clearly focuses for each faction and traits they are supposed to follow, however there's also wriggling room that allows them to have a higher level of diversity within each race. Indeed GW has made a lot of subfactions and subgroups which suggests that one thing they wanted was to be able to have more variety within each faction not just between factions. 

 

I also think some factions get a lions share of lore at present and factions like the orks are a bit under-represented in terms of the variety and depth of their current lore. I think in part when Batteltomes come out they help/force GW to actually formally put a lot of material together and as many of the BL writers are hired in or shift between projects there's certainly wriggling room for personal interpretation. 

Also I think some factions in the old world were very much "big evil goons" with orks and goblins being quite popular for that role. So I think there's ripe opportunity to diversify and get behind their faction more so than many others and provide that greater sense of a real living world by having exceptions; unique characters and suchlike. 

 

That said I think that each faction, even when presented by itself in a book, has to keep to its themes as well. If you're reading a book about skaven you expect cowardly acts of near insanity; you expect skaven speak and chittering and musks of fear and all those things. That's part of the flavour of the faction and whilst you can deviate from it it has to be done within reason. Sometimes that reason has to be shown evolution of a character, ergo a story that establishes them being apart from the rest rather than "BAM" here's David Blossmer the Skaven Philosopher, Philanthropist and all round nice guy who speaks with a pure English accent. 

[EccentricCircle]

I think part of it is that a wargame is by its nature about the broad strokes. You get to see the deeds of characters who have risen to power within their factions, so for the most part they reflect that factions archetype.

Some of the Black Library novels seem to shed light on other parts of the world, which would only really be seen in the RPG, not the wargame. For example the focus on Witch Hunters of various stripes, the various books set in urban areas, or otherwise away from active warzones. That stuff all has its place in the world, and probably provides more opourtunity for diversity of characterisation.

For all we know one of the goblins in my squad might be very well read and scholarly. However its not going to come up in the game between the point where I put him on the table alongside twenty others, and the point at which he ignominiously dies.

Conversely if he is my PC in a WFRP game, or the protagonist of my novel then the ways in which he defies the tropes of his people makes him interesting. Characters (like a certain drow) who rebel against the trappings of their society are very popular for a reason. They have a lot of conflict baked into their personality, and plenty of reasons to get into interesting situations.

There is definitely space for that in the mortal realms. The setting is so vast, and with so much in it that it has the potential to be very rich indeed. However its going to take a lot of work to expand it and develop it to that stage. They will have to be willing to push the envelop, and whether they will do that remains to be seen. It is certainly easier to just stick to the classic stereotypes, and there will always be a place for that, but I for one would certainly like to see something more as well.

I actually think that this is more relevant to the topic of Slaanesh mortals than you might think. Everyone would like an army of soldiers made up for mortals who worship Slaanesh, because we're playing a wargame, and so soldiers are what its all about. However I think that sort of rings false when you consider what Slaanesh cults are actually about. They work in the shadows, carefully corrupting people, and spreading the taint of their dark god across the land. They seduce and infiltrate, they blackmail and connive. If they are doing their job properly then their enemies won't even know that they are dealing with a Slaanesh cult until they find themselves corrupted.

You can certainly come up with cool ideas for why Slaanesh would have mortal armies, (I've seen many in other threads), but it isn't at its heart what Slaanesh worship is about. To a lesser extent this is true of the other Chaos Gods too, Tzeetch in particular is about gaining magical power at the cost of your soul and purity. These are themes which are always much easier to explore in a novel or an RPG where you see the cults in their natural habitat.

On the battlefield you are always going to see the cult at the point where they can't or won't stay hidden anymore. AoS has gone a long way to explaining why that would be the case, they literally already won in the age of chaos and now order is striking back at dominant chaos tribes. However as the cities of Order grow it opens up the phase space for more clandestine chaos cults to infiltrate and corrupt. In that respect it would be good to see more non combat themed chaos stuff, but the place for that clearly isn't in the wargame.

[Beliman]

There is a black ship in every family...so I can't count how many "black ships" should be roaming the mortal realms.Now, I must say...that I really want to read someting like that!!! Or better, I want to play with this concept  with new  types of ol'regiments of renown!!!

Edited April 29, 2019 by Beliman

[AxolotlQuestions]

Someone I know has got some fantastic backstory about their ironjawz warboss who is definitely tends towards the kunnin', rather than brutal, after all everyone knows, if an orruk runs away, it's just so they can come back for another try later.

[Lucio]

One of the biggest dangers breaking the trope identity is that your other races become humans with funny looking faces.

 

So, take your Orruk trader, what do Orruks actually trade? They're more likely to steal or claim via brute force. Maybe instead of a trader though, you've got an Orruk collector, who gathers various charms. He might "trade" one or two choice items with another Orruk, if he thinks he can't easily beat them in a fight, but mostly he just takes what he wants.

[Overread]

1 hour ago, Lucio said:

One of the biggest dangers breaking the trope identity is that your other races become humans with funny looking faces.

 

So, take your Orruk trader, what do Orruks actually trade? They're more likely to steal or claim via brute force. Maybe instead of a trader though, you've got an Orruk collector, who gathers various charms. He might "trade" one or two choice items with another Orruk, if he thinks he can't easily beat them in a fight, but mostly he just takes what he wants.

At the same time though most factions will often have quite similar core concepts which are often good to flesh out. 

Eg in the casual lore all skaven are backstabbing maniacs, and yet we know that they can build cities, build great machines and achieve huge things. So on some level there is cooperation going on; there is trade of ideas and materials, there is a backbone of civilization in some warped and twisted form which allows them to function. 

An Orruk would be the same and traders between the tribes or just trade between tribes would likely happen. Now a trader could be anything; perhaps he's a disgraced Orruk who lost his clan and is "clanless" but has managed to find a niche and twist it to his advantage by now using his status to carry rare goods between the clans.
Why fight over rare resources that might get damaged when you can trade for them instead. 

[JPjr]

@Gaz Taylor - Yeah it will be interesting how far they're willing to push it. To take the more obvious example, Dwarves in sky ships is quite a leap from ye olde traditional mining types. But for all that you can see the through-line in terms of technology and aesthetic. And whilst the KO's are presented as a schism within traditional Duardin culture, the overall psychology, as it were, of the race seems to be roughly kept in tact, they've just focused more on specific, already existing, traits like their mercantile nature.

So whilst they're willing to push the envelope, and I hope they continue to do so, it still feels like all the subtle, or not so subtle, twists they're giving factions are still within the original parameters. Which in the context of a war-game makes sense, even if I'd like to see them occasionally totally rip up pre-conceived notions and present something wildly different.

@Overread yeah. I think you definitely have to separate this from the tabletop game. I like what GW are doing with the new factions trying to give each one multiple personalities, 3 or 4 sub-factions, that you can focus on but it's still within what you'd expect of that faction. And I have no problem with that in the game, but yeah my main focus is on just the wider lore, fiction and hopefully the RPG when it arrives.

I think when you're creating individual characters it can be interesting to come up with a way of making them feel unique and not just a cookie cutter Grot, Guardian, Skaven etc but put them in some recognisable context.

I've been trying to write something about a Grot who has 'retired' from the Loonboss game and set himself up in a distant spot away from the backstabbing of the lurklairs as an organic fungus farmer. It's been interesting trying to figure out his mindset, what does a relaxing and comfortable life actually mean for a creature whose very nature is all about deviousness and being a nasty little ******. 

I had to scrap so many of my initial ideas because he was essentially just a green skinned human, but I think I'm slowly getting inside his mind and it's an interesting exercise now, figuring out what his needs and wants are, and how he expresses them.

Of course none of this makes any sense in terms of the miniature game but still interesting to think about some times.

I think the other thing in terms of, let's say, your destruction forces and fiction is I imagine it is very, very hard and possibly boring to write several hundred pages of orc/goblin/skaven speech, so writers prefer them to be more of a foil to your more understandable races. I'm looking forward to the upcoming Gloomspite novel to see how they handle it, though it again appears like the main character will actually be a Human facing off against them.

@EccentricCircle YES to so much you've written here. I've long felt that Tzeentch and Slaanesh are both much more interesting, and tempting, concepts outside of mass battles. Less your subjugating and enslaving hordes and more your insidious corruptors of civilisation, the titular Enemy Within of course.

That's why I was initially so happy about the news of the AoS RPG and then a little deflated when I realised that even as an RPG they'll probably be focusing on a much more epic scale (thankfully I have subsequently got over myself here). Hopefully they'll still be room for intrigue and subtle arts and it won't be all "BOOM! MAGIC FIREBALL IN YOUR FACE CULTIST!" But we'll see.

In terms of chaos what I would like to see explored more is this idea of chaos as a subtle force that can tempt and corrupt, and appeal to ordinary, and good, people who aren't just Conan cosplayers. The people who see Sigmar's gilded warriors heralded as saviours but then have to go home and try and feed 5 kids in a disease ridden slum, whilst the Stormcast are feasting with the pampered nobility of the cities.

(I have a silly idea for a short story where a load of Sigmar aligned explorers discover a city that has been left intact and in peace through the whole of the age of chaos, it soon becomes clear that rather than fight chaos, the people of the city have learned to embrace it within officially sanctioned strict limits and honour the 'positive' aspects of the 4, martial honour, endurance, perfection, hope and change to some extent. 

And they've survived and flourished.

And then the moral dilemma for the Sigmarites becomes do you allow these, on the whole, good people to survive, do you learn from them, or erase them from history so others don't get tempted etc etc, made all there more of an interesting choice when you juxtapose this civilised chaos city with the 'good' Free Peoples cities where you have murderous DoK temples and Corsairs ships laden with slaves docked etc).

@Lucioindeed, figuring out the actual day to day goings on in these 'alien' civilisations is fascinating. Where does their food come from? Who makes their clothes and weapons etc? How would an isolated human settlement deal with a neighbouring Orruk tribe, would it just be instant warfare or would there be an element of frontier law where away from the marble cities of Azyr you actually have to learn to break bread and deal with your neighbours.

In terms of what they trade, maybe they farm giant savage fantasy cows, and they barter the extra they have with the humans for something else.

Like for some reason I could imagine a frontier human township, as long as it was strong enough to defend itself, having an uneasy but not necessarily 24/7 hostile relationship with a nearby tribe of Orruks or Ogors or the like. But at the same time despite being less of a physical threat, replace them Ogors with say Moonclan Grotz and there'd be no chance of any kind of relationship.

I like the idea of kind of no-mans-land towns where you get a right mixture of people/creatures/etc and there's an uneasy peace. Like in 40K I've always thought as rich as the lore there is it's always been quite a sterile environment, and then you read something like Blackstone Fortress where you have this junkyard space city Precipice, effectively outside of Imperial control where all the races have to try and get along or at least not kill each other on site.

Things like that open up a lot more narrative possibilities.

[Overread]

Lets not forget Dwarves had airships in the old lore too. Heck in Gotrek and Felix a dwarven airship is quite a key element to the story through several of the early books. So even back then GW was willing to push the boundaries - I think it was mostly never developed because taht scale of model was always a Man O War thing that never really took off for long; whilst Warmaster would have been an ideal second product to take that line of models, but, agian, it never got the support to make iteslf last long term in a big way (I still hold hope that one day we might see AoS Warmaster)

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

I like the idea of seeing darkoath tribes working with free peoples, yet openly and casually talking trash about the others gods while doing so. In a sort of, "yeah your god abandoned us and our gods want to do all sorts of nasty stuff to everything, but hey we're both human and the rest of the world is out to kill us"

I'd also like to see more vampires that are just kinda chill wit living amongst the living and aren't constantly scheming or bootlicking to the mortarchs, It'd be cool to read a story about a vampire that serves as a champion in a freeguild army or a mercenary warband. 

And hey, the philosophy of gork and mork is a highly debated topic amongst orruk scholars... the whole two of them.  

Edited April 30, 2019 by Lucky Snake Eyes

[EccentricCircle]

Yeah, I've always been quite interested in trying to see a more nuanced take on Chaos. For ever ravening berserker who has been entirely subsumed by it there must be dozens if not hundreds of people who aren't as far along, and are still balanced between the darkness and the light.

The idea of Chaos as a positive force is also intriguing, because in many ways its always been a part of the lore, but is sort of alien to the way chaos is actually expressed in the miniatures line. I like the idea that chaos worshipers don't consider themselves to be evil, and that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. However we generally see people who are already at the cartoon villainy stage of the process. I'm curious to see what a chaos "civilisation" looks like. It would be cool to see crusading paladins of the dark gods, who are actually trying to save people from the undead, or the depravation of the stormcast. They would have to be ever vigilant that they don't fall to far and become blood crazed fanatics, at which point they can no longer do what they set out to do.

I'm sure I've read somewhere that the Worship of Tzeetch was actually legal in Araby for a while, but I've not seen anything which describes what a society of that sort would actually look like, beyond having powerful magic because of the innovation and experimentation which that sort of society would encourage.

I'd like to do a narrative campaign, with a strong diplomatic element along with the warhammer games. That way you do have to worry about what your neighbours think, and make deals to ensure that your trade routes stay open. I like the idea that my fledgling free city might find itself besieged by the undead, and magically teleport out a few messengers to ask other civilisations for aid. What happens when the other free cities of the area say "Sorry, we're busy with these skaven here, and the Stormcast all left to deal with a nurgle tainted city..."

Then they get ambushed by a whole legion of Tzaangors on the way back, and the chaos sorcerer leading the beasts waves off his men and says "I heard your people are in a spot of bother... have you considered letting chaos into your life?"

[JPjr]

32 minutes ago, EccentricCircle said:

I'm sure I've read somewhere that the Worship of Tzeetch was actually legal in Araby for a while

It was Cathay. Worship of Tzeentch in the guise of 'Chi-An' (something like that anyway) was officially allowed as one of the state sanctioned cults/religions. Essentially GW writers riffing on the idea of our world's I-Ching, or the Book of Changes, though as with most things Non-Empire I'm not sure it was ever really that elaborated upon other than as a bit of interesting fluff.

 

EDIT: you should also track down the book, Zaragoz, it was a pre-Black Library Warhammer novel that has a much more nuanced take on Chaos worship than became the standard depiction from late 3rd edition on. Likewise actually with one of its sequels, Storm Warriors, where again you see a less maniacal, one note characterisation of Chaos.

EDIT 2: Pre-Black Library GW books also gave us one of the best characters, I think, Warhammer's produced, the vampire Genevieve, a classic example of a deviation from the standard giving us something memorable.

EDIT 3: Your narrative campaign sounds like something you should definitely have a crack at. You ever play Mighty Empires? I wasn't around when they re-released it but the 1st edition was one of my favourite GW games, just gutted I never got to play it using actual WHFB games to determine the fights.

Edited April 30, 2019 by JPjr
IDEAS!

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

I'm throwing together a warhammer fantasy campaign where the party are dogs of war (because they can't all agree on a singular faction to play as) and one of the players is running a norscan warrior who worships the serpent (slaanesh) and views them as a patron of those who wish to master their trade, rather than the traditional depiction of slaanesh. 

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

35 minutes ago, EccentricCircle said:

Yeah, I've always been quite interested in trying to see a more nuanced take on Chaos. For ever ravening berserker who has been entirely subsumed by it there must be dozens if not hundreds of people who aren't as far along, and are still balanced between the darkness and the light.

I'd like to see a slightly more positive take on the norscan view of the chaos gods, have khorne be viewed as a god of law and honour, slaanesh as a patron of the arts and fertility, nurgle for familial bonds and the cycle of life and tzeench for history, knowledge and change (really tzeentch is pretty neutral already since change and sorcery isn't inherently evil.) It'd be cool to see some chill darkoath folk just livin a peaceful life and have some overzealous sigmar worshippers be the bad guys trying to kill these folks who just wanna cooperate and survive.

[EccentricCircle]

1 hour ago, JPjr said:

It was Cathay. Worship of Tzeentch in the guise of 'Chi-An' (something like that anyway) was officially allowed as one of the state sanctioned cults/religions. Essentially GW writers riffing on the idea of our world's I-Ching, or the Book of Changes, though as with most things Non-Empire I'm not sure it was ever really that elaborated upon other than as a bit of interesting fluff.

 

EDIT: you should also track down the book, Zaragoz, it was a pre-Black Library Warhammer novel that has a much more nuanced take on Chaos worship than became the standard depiction from late 3rd edition on. Likewise actually with one of its sequels, Storm Warriors, where again you see a less maniacal, one note characterisation of Chaos.

EDIT 2: Pre-Black Library GW books also gave us one of the best characters, I think, Warhammer's produced, the vampire Genevieve, a classic example of a deviation from the standard giving us something memorable.

EDIT 3: Your narrative campaign sounds like something you should definitely have a crack at. You ever play Mighty Empires? I wasn't around when they re-released it but the 1st edition was one of my favourite GW games, just gutted I never got to play it using actual WHFB games to determine the fights.

Interesting, It makes sense that civilisations outside of the sphere of Sigmar worshipers would have a slightly more neutral take on things. I'll have to check those out. I've never played Mighty Empires, as no one I knew got it at the time. It sounds pretty fun, and has been recommended to me a few times, but at this point I don't think it can actually be acquired.

 

[Overread]

1 hour ago, Lucky Snake Eyes said:

I'd like to see a slightly more positive take on the norscan view of the chaos gods, have khorne be viewed as a god of law and honour, slaanesh as a patron of the arts and fertility, nurgle for familial bonds and the cycle of life and tzeench for history, knowledge and change (really tzeentch is pretty neutral already since change and sorcery isn't inherently evil.) It'd be cool to see some chill darkoath folk just livin a peaceful life and have some overzealous sigmar worshippers be the bad guys trying to kill these folks who just wanna cooperate and survive.

We sort of got that with the novella Warqueen which I think is a really fantastic take on Chaos with respect to the more tribal end of things. Where Chaos gods battle for the worship of the tribes, where tribes hold their gods to standards etc.. Whilst they are still worshipping them its not the same as when you get a lot of Chaos Warrior lore (esp old world) where they are basically mindless in their pure servitude to the dark powers and dark gods. 

It was neat to see tribes where the members within them weren't all power hungry warlords; where they had festivals and parties, where the dark taint of the gods was there, but it was in battle and sort of around the corner of the tribe not out in front.