Would a ‘Dreadlord on Black Dragon’ with some kitbashing work for a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon?

[Mobeus]

I’m not a big fan of the Zombie Dragon - for starters, it’s not a dragon , it’s a wyvern (proper dragons have four legs, and wings, a wyvern has wings and two legs), and the snout is far too pug-faced. I suspect a lot of this is the merging of the model with the Terrorgheist (which I assume is some kind of dragons-bat thing?). Anyway, not a fan of the model, but I do like the idea of a zombie dragon. However, I came across the Dreadlod on Black Dragon, and that one is much more to my tastes - but do you think it would work. I can kitbash fairly well, so maybe I’d cut some holes in it, and place flesh and ribs sticking out, akin to how the Direwolves are done. But is it similar in scale? (I know I’d need a different base zombie dragon is 130mm round, Black Dragon is 100mm x 50mm rectangle). What do people think?

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Dark-Elf-Dreadlord-on-Black-Dragon

[Doko]

Only mounting manfred or the principe voldrai on a black dragon and chaging the base and it is 100% a vampire on dragon,dont need add nothing in my opinion

[Honk]

On 6/23/2021 at 6:16 PM, Mobeus said:

What do people think?

Will certainly look rad… 130 base should be ok, it is a pretty large model

[AHexInScarletRed]

I used the Dreadlord Dragon's head instead of the regular Zombie Dragon one, it fits pretty nicely. 

 

[Sception]

Put it on the correct base size, do a bit of converting to make the rider clearly a vampire, and imo you're good.  Using the actual dreadlord model but with some bits from the blood knight kit is how I'd do it.  Mannfred bits probably won't fit the same way.  So up front and clear, I think this conversion idea is absolutely viable, would look cool, and should cause you exactly zero trouble even at formal events.  I'm about to go off on a tangent over a personal pet peeve, but per the specific model conversion idea, I think it'll work out great.

THAAAATTT  SAAAIIIDDDDD

On 6/23/2021 at 12:16 PM, Mobeus said:

it’s not a dragon , it’s a wyvern (proper dragons have four legs, and wings, a wyvern has wings and two legs

Dragons aren't a specific kind of creature, they're a wide category of mythological monsters without any such strict definition.  They can have any number of heads, no legs, two, four, or more.  Wings or no wings.  Scales, feathers, or fur.  Lion heads, lizard heads, beaked heads, goat heads, or human heads.  They can have claws, paws, hooves, or hands.  They can breathe fire or no.  They can speak or no.  They can have human-like intelligence or be entirely animalistic.  They can be physical creatures, divine, or demonic.  Cthonic or celestial.  Friend, foe, or force of nature.

The rigid anatomical definitions you're referring to have no traditional, mythological, or folkloric foundation.  They trace not to stories of dragons, but to attempts to rigidly classify heraldry and coats of arms.  The use of the term "wyvern" for "a dragon with wings and two legs" only dates back to the 17th century, and even then wyverns were still explicitly dragons.  Defining dragons, wyverns, drakes, and wyrms as entirely separate creatures doesn't even go back as far as the foundation of modern fantasy fiction.  While Tolkein did have an unusually narrow definition of what he considered proper dragons to be, that definition was about their role in a story not their body plan.  His own dragons came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and limb counts.

The rigid and purely taxonomic pop culture definition of what is and especially what isn't a dragon is almost entirely a product of Dungeons and Dragons.  The developers of D&D needed more creatures to fill out their Monster Manuals, so a bunch of things that in any other context would be dragons suddenly weren't dragons so that they could have their own discrete monster entries.  The fantasy industry is dominated by nerds, and the only thing nerds love more than D&D is arbitrary classification systems, so now a couple decades later people saying things like 'that's not a dragon, it's a wyvern' like that's a distinction that matters, or has any significant source older than the 1970s.

D&D Monster Manuals, no matter how entertaining some of them were to read in their own right, and no matter how influential they've been on the fantasy landscape and fantasy games in particular, are not primary mythological sources, nor do D&D books and classifications have any sort of authority outside of the specific games they are created for.  Yes, Oldhammer Fantasy sourced from D&D so widely and diverged from it so narrowly that it might as well have been a TSR product, but Age of Sigmar is significantly more original in nature and mythological in scope and tone.  A 'dragon' in AoS could have two legs or four or six or a thousand, or could be a colossal supernatural force without necessarily any concrete & rational physical body plan, and imo the setting is significantly richer for it.

So if the most common dragons in shyish have four limbs, and thus the most typical zombie dragons employed by soulblight and flesh eater lords follow that body plan, that's fine.  That doesn't make them any more or less dragons than stardrakes.  Or mawcrushers, for that matter.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Sception

[RuneBrush]

Will be honest and say I'm of the same opinion!  My feelings are that the current zombie dragon doesn't scream "dragon" and is far too similar to the Terrorgheist in silhouette than dragons within the mortal realms.  By definition a zombie is a dead creature that has been recently raised by necromantic means and still has some flesh/muscle on it, so it ought to have more similarity to other dragons than not.  That said, the mortal realms is a huge place - but I digress...

From a modelling perspective, 130mm round base with an armoured rider on a dragon-shaped-entity (DSE^TM) would be fine under most circumstances as it would be recognisable as Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon.  Rider wise, I'm sure there's people out there who put together the Terrorghest and have the Vampire spare, we also have the awesome new Blood Dragons so you may be able to find one of those on a bits site.

[RuneBrush]

On 6/25/2021 at 2:14 PM, Sception said:

Put it on the correct base size, do a bit of converting to make the rider clearly a vampire, and imo you're good.  Using the actual dreadlord model but with some bits from the blood knight kit is how I'd do it.  Mannfred bits probably won't fit the same way.  So up front and clear, I think this conversion idea is absolutely viable, would look cool, and should cause you exactly zero trouble even at formal events.  I'm about to go off on a tangent over a personal pet peeve, but per the specific model conversion idea, I think it'll work out great.

THAAAATTT  SAAAIIIDDDDD

Dragons aren't a specific kind of creature, they're a wide category of mythological monsters without any such strict definition.  They can have any number of heads, no legs, two, four, or more.  Wings or no wings.  Scales, feathers, or fur.  Lion heads, lizard heads, beaked heads, goat heads, or human heads.  They can have claws, paws, hooves, or hands.  They can breathe fire or no.  They can speak or no.  They can have human-like intelligence or be entirely animalistic.  They can be physical creatures, divine, or demonic.  Cthonic or celestial.  Friend, foe, or force of nature.

The rigid anatomical definitions you're referring to have no traditional, mythological, or folkloric foundation.  They trace not to stories of dragons, but to attempts to rigidly classify heraldry and coats of arms.  The use of the term "wyvern" for "a dragon with wings and two legs" only dates back to the 17th century, and even then wyverns were still explicitly dragons.  Defining dragons, wyverns, drakes, and wyrms as entirely separate creatures doesn't even go back as far as the foundation of modern fantasy fiction.  While Tolkein did have an unusually narrow definition of what he considered proper dragons to be, that definition was about their role in a story not their body plan.  His own dragons came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and limb counts.

The rigid and purely taxonomic pop culture definition of what is and especially what isn't a dragon is almost entirely a product of Dungeons and Dragons.  The developers of D&D needed more creatures to fill out their Monster Manuals, so a bunch of things that in any other context would be dragons suddenly weren't dragons so that they could have their own discrete monster entries.  The fantasy industry is dominated by nerds, and the only thing nerds love more than D&D is arbitrary classification systems, so now a couple decades later people saying things like 'that's not a dragon, it's a wyvern' like that's a distinction that matters, or has any significant source older than the 1970s.

D&D Monster Manuals, no matter how entertaining some of them were to read in their own right, and no matter how influential they've been on the fantasy landscape and fantasy games in particular, are not primary mythological sources, nor do D&D books and classifications have any sort of authority outside of the specific games they are created for.  Yes, Oldhammer Fantasy sourced from D&D so widely and diverged from it so narrowly that it might as well have been a TSR product, but Age of Sigmar is significantly more original in nature and mythological in scope and tone.  A 'dragon' in AoS could have two legs or four or six or a thousand, or could be a colossal supernatural force without necessarily any concrete & rational physical body plan, and imo the setting is significantly richer for it.

So if the most common dragons in shyish have four limbs, and thus the most typical zombie dragons employed by soulblight and flesh eater lords follow that body plan, that's fine.  That doesn't make them any more or less dragons than stardrakes.  Or mawcrushers, for that matter.

In truth, this is a huge subject and one me and a few friends often talk about 😁  Depending upon what fantastical background you're looking at, sometimes a Dragon is the overarching genus or family and Wyvern a sub-species, in others a Dragon is a distinct species alongside Wyverns, Basilisks etc.  Interestingly, although what defines a Dragon is pretty variable, Wyverns nearly always have a pointy tail and pair of limbs and wings, in some cases the wings will form a second pair of limbs which can be used to walk on or climb.  You can see wyverns in many historical sources of heraldry (Owain Glyndwr springs to mind).  It's one point of discussion/contention amongst geeks that Smaug in The Hobbit film actually is a Wyvern.  Within the text of the book Tolkien doesn't describe him as having any legs, but the artwork he drew depicts him as having four legs and two wings (it still doesn't explain how he moved all that gold into a single pile)

From an AoS perspective, we've actually had very few new miniatures to determine what (if anything) is the common depiction.  There is one piece of artwork that shows Dracothion as being a snake/worm with wings, yet all his "children" have four legs (some with and without wings).  Dragon Ogors also have four legs, so there's an argument that AoS dragons have four legs - my own view is that we've seen a tiny portion of all the dragon-esq creatures in the mortal realms, so the term dragon may well be one that varies as much as our own world, depending upon the denizens of each realm.

[zilberfrid]

I think the Black Dragon with dreadlord fits vampires quite well already.

To zombify said dragon, a few holes, some ripped skin and a paint job makes them look quite dead already.

A few vampire bits (more collar, different skull on shield or different shield) and a paler paint job should be enough to sell it.

 

As for legs and dragons, that's purely a heraldry thing, and a recent one at that. Old depictions of George and the Dragon have all sorts.

If we stray from Europe, dragons are even less conforming.

Feathered snake? Long dog without even wings? Basically big long fish? Just a really long snake? Same snake, but with 2-8 legs?

All described as dragons at some point.

Edited June 27, 2021 by zilberfrid

[Sception]

A dragon isn't a species.  It's a monster in a story.  It didn't 'evolve', it was 'imagined'.  It's a narrative trope.  The origin and evolution of dragons is to be understood according to the origins and evolution of ideas, not living things.  This is obviously the case if you're looking at dragons from a real world perspective outside of the setting and story, but in AoS this is equally the case from an in-universe perspective.  D&D style modern fantasy settings like Warhammer Fantasy Battle's old world try to present their various monsters as naturalistic creatures (albeit ones that sometimes have supernatural powers) that 'evolved' over the course of a fictitious history, but Age of Sigmar is not the same.

AoS is a much more classical, mythological style setting.  Dragons in AoS didn't 'evolve' as creatures.  There aren't species or subspecies, there's no phylogenetic origin to deduce via analysis of taxonomy.  The Mortal Realms of the AoS setting exist within the wider Realm of Chaos.  It's a setting not governed by physical laws, but rather by the emotions, beliefs, and stories of the mortals within it.  So instead of evolving, most types of dragons in AoS were divinely created by Dracothion, the celestial dragon godbeast, potentially a manifestation or personification of the magic of Azyr, eventually spreading throughout the realms and taking on different aspects and characteristics according to the magic of those realms in a process analagous but not equivalent to real world evolution.  Other types of dragons would have been created - deliberately or otherwise - by other gods and godbeasts, or manifested from the raw magic of other realms in response to the emotions and stories of mortals.  So there's no reason to believe that all dragons even have the same root origin in Dracothion.

In universe, the various peoples and creatures of the Mortal Realms do not have a singular biological origin - many are functionally as alien to each other as we would be to life on another world.  Many do not have biological origins at all.  Seraphon were dreamed into reality by the Slaan.  Many of the monsters, creatures, and gods of the Realm of Death, likely including most of the dragons that would go on to become zombie dragon, were cthonian monsters from the imagined afterlife mythologies of the mortal peoples of the other realms that then spontaneously manifested fully formed from the magic of Shyish.  Genetic categorization is relatively meaningless in the AoS setting.  Terms like 'Dragon' shouldn't be read in a phylogenetic sense like 'chordate' or 'arthropod' or 'primate', but rather should be taken in a descriptive sense, like 'fish' or 'reptile' or 'tree' or 'vegetable' or 'worm' - terms without any useful phylogenetic definition.  A goldfish and a tiger shark are both 'fish' while a human is not, even though genetically a goldfish is more closely related to a human than to a tiger shark.  A crocodile and a nile monitor are both 'reptiles' while a penguin is not, even though genetically crocodiles are more closely related to penguins than to nile monitors.   An apple tree and a pine tree are both 'trees' while an orchid is not, even though genetically apple trees are more closely related to orchids than to pine trees.

...

People like categorization systems, and nerds like categorization systems /a lot/.  I get it.  I'm a nerd, too.  Phylogenetic trees are awesome, and it can be fun to speculate about the purely imagined evolutionary histories of imaginary worlds and creatures.  But insisting on phylogenetic categorization for all terms renders many otherwise useful words meaningless, and insisting on this kind of technical scientific interpretation of fictional stories, especially mythology or stories that specifically draw from mythology or aim for a mythological tone, destroys meaning rather than creating it.

Edited June 27, 2021 by Sception

[Charleston]

We can talk all day about the idea but in the end the man needs pictures! And accidentially I had a Black Dragon and the Zombie Dragon Rider (from my failed FEC army attempt) as spares around and wanted to do this conversion anyway (as there is little real use for the Dragon inside DoK). Additional bit on the Tail are the remaining little wings from the Vhargheist Kit

 

Edited August 1, 2021 by Charleston

[deynon]

Dragons has developed and changed has concept along the centuries. The first western culture referral about dragons made them more about big snakes than something like actual. There are referral about them in painting of 1200. And even if you go to Romans and Greeks you find something completely different and not associated with the word "dragon"

Western and Oriental dragon now are totally different (eastern more related to the "original" concept).

Our actual dragons are related more about last century. And evolved even more in the last 50.60 years. In the '50 of last century they were more like a sort of big lizards. After the book of Dinosaurs they vere associated to the mass concept of those. The they developed with games from the '80sin different typeso dragons, drakes,drakling, wyverns and o on.

 

About ingame now. You only need to have something that can be about almost the same volume. You can persoalize it in a lot of different ways.  For example I prefer to use the positioning of the terrorgheist with the head of the dragon zombie to use the dragon zombie itself (I have to do a videoabout magnetizing the model).