Half-dwarves and half-elves?

[Kierdale]

My apologies if this has come up before (I’d be surprised if it hadn’t), but I did a couple of searches and didn’t come up with anything...

Are there, in AoS, half human-half dwarf or half human-half elf beings?

[Beastmaster]

I recently read all the editions (1-4) of Warhammer RPG, and they are not mentioned in any of them. So, at least historically, they were never part of Warhammer, it seems.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Beastmaster

[Greyshadow]

It hasn't been mentioned either way as far as I am aware. The lack of lore suggests that such beings are at most very rare. It also suggests that although Aelves, Duardin and humans have lived side by side for generations, these peoples are resistant to allowing others into their ancient traditions. Sigmar's peoples are portrayed as far from enlightened; we have blood crazed cultists and soul-theives amongst their number.

Some game settings specifically don't allow this. The Elder Scrolls lore for example has stated that offspring take the racial attributes of their mother. This is also a possible explanation for Warhammer.

If you were thinking of converting up half-aelves or half-duardin for your army/include in your RPG I say go for it. The mortal realms are a big place after all and they may very well exist somewhere out there.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Greyshadow

[zilberfrid]

The fetus may not be viable normally, but venture into some parts of Ghyran and it could still carry to term.

[PraetorDragoon]

According to Orcs you get them when you hack an elf or dwarf in two with an axe. (you get two halves even!) 

[Kramer]

53 minutes ago, PraetorDragoon said:

According to Orcs you get them when you hack an elf or dwarf in two with an axe. (you get two halves even!) 

Horizontally or vertically?
Asking for a friend. 

[PraetorDragoon]

24 minutes ago, Kramer said:

Horizontally or vertically?
Asking for a friend. 

I think that is entirely up to the axe. 

[EccentricCircle]

One important thing to remember is that all the races in warhammer were historically really racist. This is true in a lot of fantasy settings, where there is mutual distrust between Elves and Dwarves, and Elves generally consider themselves above everyone else. However Warhammer always took it to an extreme. This is less true now in the Age of Sigmar setting, but in the Old World it would have been seen as abhorrent for the elves, dwarves and humans to even consider mating outside of their own species. Warhammer was also, at least traditioanlly always more "low fantasy" with the implication that if they are in fact different species, they shouldn't be able to reproduce (or at least not breed true). This is something that a lot of fantasy and sci fi settings tend to gloss over, but in the real world is literally the definition of "species". You can get things like Mules and Ligers, but they can't become their own races.

Now, how this applies to Age of Sigmar is a bit of an open question. The setting is a lot more high fantasy, the races live together in relative harmony compared to what used to go on, so while there is still rivalry on the scale of what we see in other settings, its not as pronounced as previously. Thus its entirely possible that things would work very differently now, although to my knowledge GW have never commented on it in AoS books. It's not a topic that gets featured much to start with.

[Ravinsild]

5 hours ago, EccentricCircle said:

One important thing to remember is that all the races in warhammer were historically really racist. This is true in a lot of fantasy settings, where there is mutual distrust between Elves and Dwarves, and Elves generally consider themselves above everyone else. However Warhammer always took it to an extreme. This is less true now in the Age of Sigmar setting, but in the Old World it would have been seen as abhorrent for the elves, dwarves and humans to even consider mating outside of their own species. Warhammer was also, at least traditioanlly always more "low fantasy" with the implication that if they are in fact different species, they shouldn't be able to reproduce (or at least not breed true). This is something that a lot of fantasy and sci fi settings tend to gloss over, but in the real world is literally the definition of "species". You can get things like Mules and Ligers, but they can't become their own races.

Now, how this applies to Age of Sigmar is a bit of an open question. The setting is a lot more high fantasy, the races live together in relative harmony compared to what used to go on, so while there is still rivalry on the scale of what we see in other settings, its not as pronounced as previously. Thus its entirely possible that things would work very differently now, although to my knowledge GW have never commented on it in AoS books. It's not a topic that gets featured much to start with.

I’m reading the Gotrek books and Felix has referred to Gotrek as an alien multiple times. Like he’s a completely and unfathomably different being altogether that he will never truly understand or get. 
 

So yeah I think they are like completely separate in every way possible. 

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

In the WHFB-era novel Giantslayer, Teclis (yes, that Teclis) reflects on past encounters with human women that led this direction, and Callis of the Callis & Toll series has an Aelven lover for a bit. Neither story ever addresses the topic of children.

I highly doubt GW ever will, or that they will allow a licensor to do so. Just personal supposition, admittedly, but for all the bloodmurderkill, they can be remarkably squeamish about other topics.

[Double Misfire]

There's a half-elf featured in the 2001 wfb novel Gilead's Blood, and if you want to get esoteric half-eldar are explicitly stated to be a thing and pop up a few times in 1st ed 40k, but that's your lot. With the two races' proximity for you'd think that if dwarfs and humans were capable of mixing at least a few examples would have popped up over the course of the 2500 years since the Empire's founding, which they have not.

Warhammer half-orcs however, totally a thing until the early 90s. Read all about them here: http://theleadpile.blogspot.com/2014/01/not-quite-full-orc.html

[Overread]

Halfbreeds are exceptionally rare. The Felix and Gotrek books actually go into a lot comparing Dwarves to Humans and show how "alien" they are indeed to each other. Though a lot of is partly based on their social histories and structure. 

 

However its also important to remember that even in those tales Gotrek was a few hundred years older then Felix. Both Elves (Aelves) and Dwarves live a lot longer than your standard human. So that's one inhibition to cross species romances. I'd say Mortral Realms opens up the doors much more to crossbreeds and cross species relations since Cities of Sigmar are a thing whilst, as noted above, in the Old World they were ALL very distrusting of ecah other and kept to their own (further reducing the chances of crossbreeds)

 

I'd say that unless the lore develops to include them in a big way; then they are likely either impossible or so exceptionally rare as to be near impossible. 

[Acid_Nine]

4 hours ago, RocketPropelledGrenade said:

In the WHFB-era novel Giantslayer, Teclis (yes, that Teclis) reflects on past encounters with human women that led this direction, and Callis of the Callis & Toll series has an Aelven lover for a bit. Neither story ever addresses the topic of children.

I highly doubt GW ever will, or that they will allow a licensor to do so. Just personal supposition, admittedly, but for all the bloodmurderkill, they can be remarkably squeamish about other topics.

So what I am interpreting from this is that the new godly teclis may have taken up some of the mannerisms of Zeus and his... 'love' affairs?

Edited May 1, 2020 by Acid_Nine

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

1 hour ago, Acid_Nine said:

So what Interpret from this is that the new godly teclis may have taken up some of the mannerisms of Zeus and his... 'love' affairs?

That seems like a huge leap of an assumption to me.

[Acid_Nine]

3 minutes ago, RocketPropelledGrenade said:

That seems like a huge leap of an assumption to me.

not when you've been reading a lot of mythology for college...

I dunno, I just thought it was funny, seeing as outside of malekith he may be one of the main womanizers among the Gods.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Acid_Nine

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

5 minutes ago, Acid_Nine said:

not when you've been reading a lot of mythology for college...

I did that too, when I was in college. I meant that taking one bit of side characterization for Teclis is not equivalent to what is a fairly defining trait for Zeus, especially when they aren't even equivalent--Teclis is neither an adulterer nor a rapist. And that's even before considering that the gods in AoS are not 1 to 1 translations of who they were in the world that was, and Teclis is now the God of Wisdom, while Zeus remains the patriarch of the gods in a myth-cycle where the patriarch of the gods fathers patricidal children, which is a decidedly non-wise action. There's just a ton of ways in which "this god has had sex" is not the same thing as which "this god is like Zeus." If that's what you're learning in your mythology class, someone in that class is badly messing up the subject matter.

 

EDIT TO ADD: But this is neither here nor there when it comes to the original topic, so apologies to the rest of the thread posters.

Edited May 1, 2020 by RocketPropelledGrenade

[Sttufe]

2 hours ago, Acid_Nine said:

So what I am interpreting from this is that the new godly teclis may have taken up some of the mannerisms of Zeus and his... 'love' affairs?

It is possible, say one of the Aelven gods were too be weakened towards the Slaanesh side might be how he/she/they break free. Obviously they stop at some point, but it could be a thing that they do. Plus they are totally missing a womanizer god and either it's Nagash or Teclis, whichever it is I prefer kinky Aelf over creepy old necrophile. Could be a fun plotline.

[Acid_Nine]

1 hour ago, RocketPropelledGrenade said:

I did that too, when I was in college. I meant that taking one bit of side characterization for Teclis is not equivalent to what is a fairly defining trait for Zeus, especially when they aren't even equivalent--Teclis is neither an adulterer nor a rapist. And that's even before considering that the gods in AoS are not 1 to 1 translations of who they were in the world that was, and Teclis is now the God of Wisdom, while Zeus remains the patriarch of the gods in a myth-cycle where the patriarch of the gods fathers patricidal children, which is a decidedly non-wise action. There's just a ton of ways in which "this god has had sex" is not the same thing as which "this god is like Zeus." If that's what you're learning in your mythology class, someone in that class is badly messing up the subject matter.

 

EDIT TO ADD: But this is neither here nor there when it comes to the original topic, so apologies to the rest of the thread posters.

Sounds like you may need need to party with Dionynus... 

 

Lighten up, it was a joke and nothing more. I know there are ample differences in zeus and teclis, it was just a funny thought I had.  Teclis was known to have slept with human woman, had a book where he was introduced in bed with two aelves, and who knows who else. I found it amusing that he became a god and likewise that some of those tendencies could transfer over. It wasn't an attack on you, Zeus or Teclis. 

Edited May 1, 2020 by Acid_Nine

[Kramer]

6 hours ago, Acid_Nine said:

It wasn't an attack on you, Zeus or Teclis. 

Still Teclis is very offended by the thought he would be seen as a swan... even for some human nookie. 

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A bull on the other hand seems more likely since the last preview . 

[Kramer]

On 5/1/2020 at 10:22 AM, PraetorDragoon said:

I think that is entirely up to the axe. 

Just checking if we’ll end up with a mermaid situation

[Acid_Nine]

8 hours ago, Kramer said:

Still Teclis is very offended by the thought he would be seen as a swan... even for some human nookie. 

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.

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A bull on the other hand seems more likely since the last preview . 

Honestly, I just want there to be legends about him doing Zeus stuff, but every time someone asks him about it he's just "What? No!" and denies those myths even exist.

[BrownDog]

Well we do have Maesa the aelf prince who was in a relationship with a human woman, and it's been a while since reading those short stories but I think it was mention how they weren't able to have children.

[Kierdale]

Thanks for the replies and very interesting discussion.

 

I was asking because I was making a unit of handgunners and found I also had a pair of dwarf thunderers (just two) and some dwarf bitz, so had the idea that few duardin had escaped from the ancestral stronghold to Azyr during the Age of Chaos...over the years the descendants’ blood had become -diluted, shall we say- and hence some of this unit of Thunderers were rather long of shank and short of beard, but all of dispossessed blood (some a sixteenth, or a thirty-second duardin blood, but duardin all the same)...

 

However I think I’ll just have it that the human members swore themselves to the dispossessed, taking blood oaths, to help find and reclaim the lost Karak. Most took the oath honourably, a few perhaps just due to the prospect of finding an old stronghold full of loot...

 

Again, thanks for the discussion and opinions.

[flamingwalnut]

14 hours ago, Kierdale said:

Thanks for the replies and very interesting discussion.

 

I was asking because I was making a unit of handgunners and found I also had a pair of dwarf thunderers (just two) and some dwarf bitz, so had the idea that few duardin had escaped from the ancestral stronghold to Azyr during the Age of Chaos...over the years the descendants’ blood had become -diluted, shall we say- and hence some of this unit of Thunderers were rather long of shank and short of beard, but all of dispossessed blood (some a sixteenth, or a thirty-second duardin blood, but duardin all the same)...

 

However I think I’ll just have it that the human members swore themselves to the dispossessed, taking blood oaths, to help find and reclaim the lost Karak. Most took the oath honourably, a few perhaps just due to the prospect of finding an old stronghold full of loot...

 

Again, thanks for the discussion and opinions.

A good amount of dwarves DID make it to Azyr. In fact, that is why they are called the Dispossessed: they gave up their holds and homes for the lives of their clan and kin. They fled, they are refugees, and for 500 years they planned. Some cool tidbits in the Cities of Sigmar book. Whoever stayed behind either died, turned to Chaos, or found new ways to survive like the Fyreslayers or the Kharadron Overlords. 

I do LOVE the idea of half-dwarves/half-elves. It fits so well into the more metropolitan idea of AoS. There isn't nearly as much bitterness and alienation between the races because they are all much more united in a cause and all suffered at the hands of Chaos. Whether they can interbreed and whether they ever WILL by GW, who knows. But at the very least, I am always up for interesting stories of love and life between "unlikely pairs" like duardin and aelves. Very much a great odd couple dynamic.  

[Sttufe]

1 hour ago, flamingwalnut said:

A good amount of dwarves DID make it to Azyr. In fact, that is why they are called the Dispossessed: they gave up their holds and homes for the lives of their clan and kin. They fled, they are refugees, and for 500 years they planned. Some cool tidbits in the Cities of Sigmar book. Whoever stayed behind either died, turned to Chaos, or found new ways to survive like the Fyreslayers or the Kharadron Overlords. 

I do LOVE the idea of half-dwarves/half-elves. It fits so well into the more metropolitan idea of AoS. There isn't nearly as much bitterness and alienation between the races because they are all much more united in a cause and all suffered at the hands of Chaos. Whether they can interbreed and whether they ever WILL by GW, who knows. But at the very least, I am always up for interesting stories of love and life between "unlikely pairs" like duardin and aelves. Very much a great odd couple dynamic.  

Could be an interesting idea, have the Lumineth and the Fyreslayers, one rage and passion, and the other cool and distanced, all working together in a single coordinated army. Although you wouldn't have that much shooting, nor flying at all, it could be an interesting list idea.