Discussion Warhammer Wild West as an alternative setting? Brainstorming

[Scalenex]

Westhammer World Anvil Wiki


So about a month ago I kind of had caffeine induced insomnia. I don’t drink coffee much, but I felt like I was in the zone writing at my favorite bagel place, where I went for breakfast and the coffee refills were free. That night I had an insomnia induced inspiration. I decided to jot some stuff down then come back to it to see if it’s was crazy.

I will also add that I was re-watching Firefly episodes for the umpteenth time and that invaded my dreams while working on my lengthy attempt to mix noir detective style with Warhammer Fantasy. Then I had a crazy dream.

A grizzled western anti-hero type character having a gun fight with a Chaos sorcerer on a flying steam train full of haggard western style extras who were beaten down by life so much that they lacked the will to intervene in the fight.

I woke up and thought. YESSSSS!!!

I got up and started typing my brainstorming for a Warhammer Western world. Then I vowed to revisit the concept later to make sure it’s not so stupid I shouldn’t post it. It wouldn’t be the first time I woke up, did some frenzied writing and decided in the light of day that what I wrote was garbage.

Before I begin. I am not pretending I am the first person that ever thought of this on Lustria-Online. I will note that I am hardly the first person to put Warhammer characters into a Wild West setting, but they were generally standalone pieces and not part of a world building project.


First off. It is my contention that if the universe/galaxy/world is not a Crapsack world, then it is not a Warhammer world. For reference, this is the TV tropes entry on Crapsack worlds.

I thought about quoting the entry on the various Warhammer games, but it would be a really lengthy quote and I’d have to change a lot of written words are analogous to “mahrlect” and “skyte.” Warhammer is near the top on this link if you want to read the full salty description.

So let’s figure out how to make a crapsack western setting.

It could be adapting Lustria or Naggaroth or the nebulous middle ground in the World that Was or we could have a Wild West-like realm get separated from the continuum in Age of Sigmar. Alternatively one could create a Warhammer 40K world where a bunch of factions got stranded on an isolated planet and do to some big deus ex machina, they had to make due with a lot less advanced technology.

But it’s easier to say Warhammer Wild West (Warhammer 1886?) should not be considered canon extension of either Oldhammer, AoS, or Warhammer 40K. It’s merely inspired by it.


I am going to talk about the historical events that lead to the Wild West as we understand it. I’m going to probably over generalize and over simplify it. I’m going to talk about how fictionalized versions of these historical events get things right and get things wrong.


DISCLAIMER

History has horrible things happen in it. I’m going to talk about these horrible things. I am not condoning them, but I won’t pretend past atrocities never happened because that does it a disservice. And yes, since I’m trying to create a crapsack world. The Warhammer Wild West will also have past atrocities and for verisimilitude, these fictional atrocities and natural disasters should parallel real world historical events. By creating fictional events based on real world events, I’m not trying to cheapen history. When I make broad sweeping summaries of real world history, I’m not trying to cheapen history either.

I’m going to talk about small pox, the Spanish Conquista, Manifest Destiny and the American Civil War. These are potentially emotionally loaded aspects of history, but they invariably shaped the foundations of what we know as the Wild West. To not include them would be a disservice.

Okay, lets talk about the real and the legendary Wild West.


Pre-Colombian Native Americans

There are counter theories on how indigenous people got here even sooner, but the most commonly held notion is that the ancestors of what we think of as Native Americans today immigrated to the Americas from what is now known as Siberia crossing the Bering Land Bridge about 15,000 years ago, give or take a few millennia.

They spread from the frozen north all the way down the lower reaches of South America. A lot of the Native American tribes were nomadic and tribal, but civilizations and building cultures did pop up, decline, and get replaced by new cultures.

Jared Diamond’s excellent book Guns, Germs and Steel does a good job explaining how the Western hemisphere’s geographic features and biosphere resulted in smaller, less populous and less technological advanced civilizations than Europe, North Africa, and Asia produced.

In the real world, Native Americans got largely displaced by Europeans. Early explorers introduced Eurasian diseases such as Small Pox devastated the Native American populations in both North and South America taking them to a fraction of their original pre-Colombian numbers. Most of the disease spreading was accidental. Sometimes, a few very evil expansion minded Europeans deliberately encouraged the spread of diseases.


England and France colonists sometimes treated Natives fairly but on the whole one can say they used and abused Native Americans as proxies in their wars and commerce. Even to this day, the United States government still often treats Native American populations and nations unfairly. The Spanish Conquistadors did not see Native Americans as having the same human rights that Spaniards did. Interbreeding between Native Americans and Europeans was often not consensual. Racial mixing happened so much that now hundreds of millions of people have distinct cultures built around their mixed heritage essentially creating a new ethnic group.


Now to fiction. Older western films sometimes showed Indians as brutal savages standing in the way of glorious Manifest Destiny. Their deaths are celebrated. Arguably, a lot of movies have Indian attacks and fights be almost casual nuisances. They aren’t a main aspect of the plot, almost like dealing with a troublesome animal attack.

Sometimes you got films like Dances with Wolves and Avatar which show pure and noble Natives getting brutalized by callous and evil Westerners. Maverick was not about Native American interactions much but when it did include Native American characters, it was fairly sympathetic to them.

A lot of media goes somewhere in between with lots of shades of grey. The Native Americans were not perfect, but they did not deserve the poor treatment they received. Sometimes the white people who killed or displaced them did so with the best of intentions and not out of malice.

A lot of media depicts Indians as noble savages. This both elevates and belittles them at the same time. I don’t know how to deconstruct this further.

The Spanish Conquistadors that toppled the Aztec Empire, did so with many things we would certainly call war crimes, but the Aztecs were brutal ironfisted conquerors to their neighbors before Europeans set foot in the Americas.


Who are the allegorical Native Americans in Wild West Warhammer? Perhaps Lizardmen!

If we want to use the one dimensional savages that are a roving menace. Warhammer has Orcs and Goblins with a possibly insulting feather and bow and arrow motif. Ogres, Skaven, various undead, Daemons and others can fill this niche. If you want to go dangerous noble savage, maybe borrow some of the Orc motifs from World of Warcraft where the Orcs are dangerous and savage but they have an element of honor and nobility in their own way.

But really, Lizardmen are the Native Americans of Warhammer in the World That Was. At the very least they are the Aztecs of Warhammer if not the stand-in for all Native America. Since Warhammer Wild West is based off the Warhammer World that Was, let’s put Lizardmen in the role as of the Aztecs.

Let’s call the Aztec Lizardmen Lustriecans. This doesn’t meant that Lizardmen should be the ONLY allegorical representation of Native Americans but they should certainly be one of them. Maybe have one Native American allegory for the victims of the Conquista and another for the victims of Manifest Destiny


I’m going to run with this. So we are going to have the Lustriecans be a displaced people. Before the Conquistadors toppled the Aztec Empire, disease ravaged them brought on accidentally by Spanish explorers. In this case disease doesn’t come from germs, it comes from dark magic.

So we could have Clan Pestilens depopulate Lustrieca taking out at least half the Lizards. This brings up the question “What happened to the Skaven afterwards?” Did the Skaven die out here or are they still around?

If instead of Skaven plagues, it’s Nurgle Plagues, then it’s easier to hand wave away the ancient bad guys. They returned to the Chaos Realm after their big infection was done.

Another alternative is that a Nagash-like figure depopulated Lustrieca with a necromancy fueled attempt at regional domination. As a nice twist to differentiate itself from Warhammer Original Recipe, would be to maybe have one or more Slann fall to the dark side and ruin everything with their necromancy or Chaos magic.

So some kind of supernatural force weakened Lustrieca and then Lustrieca was destroyed by an allegory of the Conquista. Probably, it would be best to have the Lustriecans defeated by some faction of filthy ignorant humans, but it’s not required. They could have been conquered and/or displaced by Orcs, Elves, or something else and the effect is largely the same.


The question one would ask, is are there are any Lustriecans left around? Today there are essentially no Aztecs, but there are millions of people with Aztec ancestors and aspects of Aztec culture remain a vibrant part of modern Mexico including its very flag. Beyond simply the Aztecs, there are far more mixed raced descendants of indigenous Americans than full ethnic indigenous Americans in both North and South America.

It would be gross if the Lustriecans interbred with humans. Lizardmen are not Fimir. Gross. But we have had a lot of stories about Lizardmen influencing humans. They could have tried to influence humans in the distant past or as a failed response against their Conquista allegory. Even if the Lustriecans are gone, there could be warmblood cults worshipping the Old Ones existing in isolated pockets.

Alternatively, some Lizardmen could still live. It would probably be good to divorce Lizardmen from spawning pools. If Lustriecans gave live birth or laid eggs, they could exist in isolated nomadic pockets that are self-sustaining. If they still need Spawning pools, the locations of spawning pools would have to very well-kept secrets which I find would hard to sustain in the face of any allegory to Manifest Destiny.

When I first scribbled this out, I was thinking maybe a single epic Slann (or a group of Slann) helped evolve the Lizardmen with their dying act letting them lay eggs like mundane reptiles. But revisiting this, I have a new idea. What if instead of evolving the Lizardmen the Slann’s last act was to evolve the spawning pools into the sky itself?

Rain dances are an important part of real world Native American culture and an important part of fictionalized portrayals of Native Americans. Especially since most Western settings are a bit on the arid side. The Lustriecans Skink Priests would be constantly reading portents and signs to find out where and when these sacred rains would fall. The moving locations of these spawning events would prevent an enemy of the Lustriecans from taking their spawning pools away maliciously (or accidentally if they water their horses at a spawning pool and drink it dry).


What about Native allegories instead of or in addition Lizardmen?

Lizards could be the allegorical Aztecs and maybe Incans or Mayans too, and someone else could be the allegorical for Great Plains Native Americans or Cherokee or some other northern tribal group.

One could always use humans. There are thousands of books and online sources one could use to find information on real world tribes. It’s a little controversial to make a fictionalized human type. A long time ago Games Workshop introduced some extremely racist Warhammer pygmies in the Southlands that they tried to sweep under the rug.

Native inspired Wood Elves could highlight the close to nature aspect. A more aggressive fantasy race such as Orcs or Ogres could help push the old school very un-PC cowboys versus Indians. Maybe we could create a Native American-like Skaven clan, but generally I think Skaven should remain an allegory for the dark side of civilization, not the dark side of nomadic tribalism.


Narrative Idea: Open Spaces and Sparse Populations

Both the real and mythological American Wild West had a lot of relatively empty space. Lots of different groups, but the region was relatively sparsely populated.

If there was a miniatures game, it would look more like Mordheim than Age of Sigmar or 40K.


8th edition had sixteen playable armies plus a bunch of places like Tilea, Estalia, Cathay that have big populations but no playable armies, maybe a limited addition unit or two. In Age of Sigmar, there are over 20 entries in the Forces of Order alone on the Games Workshop website.

Warhammer Wildwest should not have this many groups. I’m thinking four or five broad groups at most (Order, Destruction, Death, etc). Twelve distinctive smaller cultures at most.

Humans are kind of a given, but there is no guarantee we need Wild West Fantasy Elves or Wild West Fantasy Dwarves or Wild West Fantasy Orcs. We certainly don’t need Wild West Dark Elves, Wild West High Elves, and Wild West Wood Elves.


Narrative Thought: The Wild West was actually pretty diverse

One interesting fact about the western frontier, while it was sparsely populated it was diverse, especially for its time. A lot of early Western Movies were pretty white washed, but that wasn’t always the case.

Again, a hypothetical Wild West Mordheim would allow unusually cosmopolitan units, so you could have an Orc enforcer in a Human dominated band without raising a lot of eyebrows.

A lot of the historical cowboys, railroad workers, miners, and homesteaders were either ex-slaves or the first generation children of ex-slaves hoping to make a new life for themselves out West. A lot of veterans of the American Civil War, both those who fought for the union and those who fought for the Confederacy sought new lives for themselves out West. Ex-Confederate shoulders sometimes had to rub elbows with former slaves and with former Union soldiers for instance.

You had Protestants rubbing elbows with Catholics. Native Americans and whites had to deal with each other. Mixed race children had to try to find a way to mix in with one or both groups as best they could. A few immigrants added to the mix as Chinese came in through the Pacific coast to work on the railroads. The era saw fresh off the boat immigrants coming directly from Europe the opposite direction. Some of these European immigrants went West. The West had third or fourth generation American born of European descent mixing with these immigrants.

A fantasy version of the Wild West should probably have Lizardmen, Humans, Orcs, Elves, and whatnot a lot more intermixed with each other than you see in Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar, or Warhammer 40K. I’m not saying these groups would get along well, far from it, but it does mean that when an Elf and Orc see each other they aren't necessarily going to immediately start shooting.


Narrative Thought: Life in the West is hard. Life in a Warhammer World is hard.

If life isn’t hard, it’s arguably not a Warhammer world. This fits with both real world and fictional representations of the Wild West. Out in the wide open spaces, you have to depend on yourself, your family, and if you are lucky, your community or you are dead. This is the literary synergy that made me want to write this.

Magic, steam punk or historically inaccurate technology could have its imprint on a Warhammer Wild West, but only if it can be used violently. In other words, for every steam punk device that saves labor or enables transportation, there should be three or four steam punk devices used to inflict death on the enemy.

I’m thinking Wild West era guns, steam powered machines, early Industrial era metal tools, horses and whatnot, but such a fantasy setting could (and probably should) be rife with historical inaccuracies.

Just like in the Warhammer world that was, steam punk technology and magic cannot be used to make the life a struggling farmer or rancher any easier but it can allow for industrial scale slaughter. The universe of Warhammer 40K also has far more futuristic weaponry than wondrous shelters, advanced medicine and other peaceful aspects of advancement.

So magic and steampunk yes, but it should have a dark edge.


Narrative Thought: Humans should probably be the dominant group.

Most sci-fi and fantasy is based on the assumption that Humans are large and in charge. It’s not required, but things get more complicated if Humans are not the “default” race, and I don’t want to overcomplicate things. So Humans should be the plurality if not the majority of all sapient life.


Narrative Thought: Chaos should probably be grandfathered In.

Wild West Chaos doesn’t necessarily have to include Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Hashut, and the Horned Rat, but without some kind of nasty source of Chaos with a capital “C”, it’s not Warhammer, in my humble opinion.

The mythical Wild West has people seeking law, seeking order, seeking stability, seeking honor, but they always seek these things in the face of a metaphorical headwind. Chaos is a perfect embodiment of this metaphor taken to 11 (on a scale of a possible 5).

If you can convince me otherwise, I’m open to replacing Chaos with some other Bigger Bad.



Narrative Thought: A fantasy/western hybrid should probably go light on magic


It’s hard to not have Warhammer without magic, but this is a sticky situation with Western or neo-Western settings. RIPD, Cowboys and Aliens, and Jonah Hex all flopped. I liked Ghost Rider and the Western tie-in but I am a minority in the nerd community for actually liking Ghost Rider.

This is just my opinion, but In any event my instincts tell that magic should be real and fairly common, but less powerful and readily available compared to Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 8th edition. 60/40 Western/Fantasy ratio. Maybe 70/30. Not 50/50.

Manticore is attacking your herd of cattle. That’s no biggie, but using an enchanted Stetson hat to call down lightning bolts is a bit much.


Narrative Thought: The American Civil War, I want to use an allegory for it.

The American Civil War remains a contentious topic to some today. We are over 150 years past the end of the American Civil War and views on who was right and who was wrong still very much differ along geographic lines.

I’m not saying the Union was perfect. There are certainly questionable things they did in the way they conducted their war, but I do not agree with the counter narrative that calls the American Civil War “The War of Northern Aggression.” I could go into my view in detail, but Lustria-Online is a forum for fantasy not politics or for historical revisionism.

So why am I bringing up the Civil War at all. Because what we think of the Wild West era of American history, occurred immediately after the American Civil War. A lot of the people who sought out their fortunes out West were veterans of the War. Somewhere newly freed ex-slaves hoping to make a new life for themselves. Every adult in the old West at least remembered the War Between the States even if they didn’t participate in it.

By most estimates more Americans died in the Civil War than WWII. About 600,000 casualties. This is a big deal objectively but its impact was magnified because there weren’t a whole lot of people in the United States in the 1860s. Very few people would not personally know at least one person who died during the Civil War. A lot of painful memories. And the tensions between the North and South were still pretty hot even though the fighting stopped.

So my long winded point, is that both the real Wild West and the fictional depictions of the Wild West bear the imprint of the American Civil War.

Lets look at Firefly, the greatest space western ever. What does the first couple minutes of the series show? A civil war of course! Now in this case the Browncoats are the allegory for the Confederacy and the Alliance is the allegory for the Union BUT the Alliance is the group that allows slavery and they are the group that is implied to have started the fight. That’s fine.

I need an event similar to the American Civil War. Because Warhammer Wild West is a crapsack world, the outgunned losing side can also be the noble and just side because in a crapsack world the good guys usually lose.

So I want to have my setting start shortly after a devastating civil war of some sort. Problem is I don’t have any developed culture yet, so I’m not sure who is fighting who or why. I am open to ideas on what the allegorical civil war should look like but I am going to make a caveat. The Warhammer Civil War allegorical should not be one side is Order and one side is Chaos, it should be a true civil war. Maybe, there could be a small Chaos group that helped fan the flames to start the Civil War (or fan the flames to keep the war going longer), but Chaos should not be the main drivers of this conflict.


Narrative Thought: Civilization and the Frontier

While the Wild West has influenced American cultural identity in many intangible ways, but at the time it wasn’t super important in the grand scheme of things. Collectively the western United States of the 1880s was only a few million people. A small fraction compared to what the United States as a whole held. A microscopic fraction compared to the populations of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

For most denizens of the old West, Asia and Africa didn’t matter much. When someone referred to the rest of civilization they would often say out East to refer to both the more populous lands of the United States and Europe. While men were taming the wild west, much of what we think of as Western Civilization was experiencing the Victorian Era.

If I want to make a coherent Warhammer Wild West setting I need to at least come up with a one or two paragraph description to cover what the allegorical stand-in for “back east” is.

In order for this hypothetical Western setting to be wild, I need somewhere that is civilized to be a foil may it. Maybe Fantasy Civilization is tightly interconnected with the Fantasy Wild West. Maybe Civilization is far away and barely an afterthought. Maybe the denizens of this setting were isolated by a magical deus ex machina so there is no travel between Civilization and the Wild and all the main characters are essentially stranded in the Wild West.

It doesn’t happen to be too lands west and east of each other either. Firefly had the “central planets” as the stand-in for the allegorical East and “the rim” for the allegorical Wild West

I’m open to ideas. Once we figure out who or what the allegorical Civilization/”back east” is, it should make figuring out what the allegorical Civil War looks like. This should also help flesh out the next part.


Narrative Thought: Manifest Destiny, I want an allegorical equivalent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

So for those not subject to basic public schooling the United States. Manifest Destiny is the idea that America was destined to expand from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast, but it was and is controversial. Even at its time, not everyone agreed America should become an imperialist nation. Through the lens of history, Manifest Destiny is even more controversial because much of the United States’ westward expansion involved the displacement or outright murder of Native Americans. Manifest Destiny also related to the United States’ war with Mexico that led to the annexation of Texas and California, though the Mexican nation is the result of the Spaniards displacing and murdering a lot of Native Americans.

I probably want to include a nod to Manifest Destiny somewhere. This connects to whatever the government “back east” looks like. Someone had to expand into whatever passes for the Wild West. The backstory of this setting requires figuring out who displaced whom. Also how, when, and why the displacing occurred. This will have a big impact on how the different groups respond to each other.


Narrative Thought: Filling the Roster

I’m open to suggestions and brainstorming on ANY aspect of Warhammer Wild West, but where I can really use the help of the L-O forumites chiming in is filling out the roster. A note on filling the roster. Just like Orcs and Goblins are part of the same group and that Lizardmen include Sauri, Skinks, and Kroxigors, just because a creature or person type exists doesn’t mean they have to exist as a stand alone faction. A human nation could have elf, dwarf, Halfling, and ogre minorities for instance.

-I definitely want to have a dominant human culture. I don’t know if should be based on the Empire, or Great Britain, or the United States but there really needs to be a major, flawed but civilized power.

-I definitely want to have at least two competing factions within this dominant culture. Maybe related to the recent civil war, maybe tied to something else.

-I definitely want to have Lustriecans running around or at least a group that is carrying on their legacy as best they can. While it would be relatively easy to come up with interesting setting appropriate adaptations for Sauri, Skinks and Kroxigor, and the like, the harder part is figuring out what the Lustriecans actually want and what their relations to the others are.

-I definitely want to have at least one REALLY evil faction that wants to destroy the world or take over the world. Chaos worshippers, genocidal Skaven, savage Beastmen, or some kind of more order driven evil like the Chaos Dwarfs or Dark Elves. It’s just not Warhammer without the specter of something unspeakably awful

-I definitely want to have at least one sort of goofy evil faction. It could be a loose category of criminals spawning from the main human power or it could be a fantasy race like Orcs or Ogres. Basically I need someone to rob stage coaches, rustle cattle, and do general Western movie mischief.

-I probably want to have some kind of undead faction. It doesn’t have to be based on Vampire Counts or Tomb Kings. I’m not sure what Western undead should look like, but I want them.

-I probably want to have some sort of sneaky evil faction that operates like a secret cult hiding in plain sight withing the main Human power nation.

-I probably want to incorporate the abolition of slavery into the backstory and create a subgroup made up of newly freed ex-slaves. Maybe they exist as their own group. Maybe they are a subculture within another faction.

-I might want another Native American allegory race that is not the Lustriecans. Maybe one mostly good one, one mostly evil one.

-I might want another human nation that either exists alongside or is competing with the main human power.

-I probably want to include Dwarfs and/or Elves in here somewhere. I probably don’t want to include more than two kinds of Elves or two kinds of Dwarfs. If I want diversity among Elves and Dwarves, I could have competing subcultures within the Elf and Dwarf society but I don’t want something like the Dark Elves and the High Elves where the two elven factions are desperately trying to kill the other one.

-I might want Halflings or Ogres somewhere.

-I might want to radically reinvent the Beasts of Chaos. Minotaurs are very Greco-Roman things. Warhammer Wild West Beastmen should be based instead on animals actually found in the American West. I am a big fan of Native American legends. Mostly I’m familiar with Cherokee folklore, but there are hundreds of tribes and they all have their own legends. I know there are hundreds of strange and terrifying monsters in Native American folklore that would be great fits in Warhammer Wild West. Maybe they don’t have to be a faction, but are just a periodic supernatural hazard. Obviously I should have chupacaberas, but I probably don’t want to have organized chupacaberas.



Anyway, if we can brainstorm a cohesive setting from this, we could have the building blocks for a lot of fun stories. MAYBE we could even homebrew some rules for a Wild West Minis game or at least convert or sculpt a representative model for funsies.

 

[thedarkfourth]

Maybe we as a forum should organise a collaborative story system. We each take it in turns to write one chapter of an ongoing narrative set in this universe - like those games where you pass around a piece of paper and write one word each until you get a nonsense sentence, but longer.

If only there were someone here with organisational skills that could set up a rota or something.....

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

Maybe we as a forum should organise a collaborative story system. We each take it in turns to write one chapter of an ongoing narrative set in this universe - like those games where you pass around a piece of paper and write one word each until you get a nonsense sentence, but longer.

If only there were someone here with organisational skills that could set up a rota or something.....

Would love that!

I'm brainstorming ideas for this, Scalenex. So thorough, and well thought out post as always, but for a wild west setting, all of the races' hostility towards others will need to be toned down significantly. There needs to be concrete and well thought out reasons for this.

Anyway, I'm thinking that a human civilization in this setting that would fit perfectly, and can be one of the human tribes/nation states hailing from the Old World, routed by other stronger forces. I'm thinking about Kislev, and in fact, this setting can totally take place in a very artic/snowy region (i do like it cold )

The Lizardmen could replace Skaven's role and take shelter underground, but they aren't the bad guys. In fact, i think it would be kewl if the region was once a humid and hot place well suited for the Lizardmen, but nature (or some other force) up takes upon their merciless course, and transforms the entire region, forcing the Lizardmen to find shelter. Akin to a human equipping him/her self for cold temperatures, these Lizardmen will need to wear and adapt in order to conserve heat for their bodies.

Meanwhile troves of tattered humans settle down in their new surroundings, Making homage in this cold, lonely place.

They're at home, yet so far away...

 

[Scalenex]

Maybe we as a forum should organise a collaborative story system. We each take it in turns to write one chapter of an ongoing narrative set in this universe - like those games where you pass around a piece of paper and write one word each until you get a nonsense sentence, but longer.

If only there were someone here with organisational skills that could set up a rota or something.....

I'd like this a lot, but BEFORE we pass around the storytelling stick and start taking turns creating a narrative story, we need to agree to a basic framework for the setting first.

Otherwise if we take turns creating the basic setting it will be a Kitchen Sink setting. We'd have a western setting with humans, orcs, elves, lizardmen, ninjas, martians, talking potatoes and Superman fighting Goku.

but for a wild west setting, all of the races' hostility towards others will need to be toned down significantly. There needs to be concrete and well thought out reasons for this.

Agreed. I think I pretty much stated overtly that I wanted the hostility toned down a bit, but we definitely need a concrete and well thought out reason for it.

Here's my initial thoughts, we can certainly add on to it.

1) Whatever form the allegory for the American Civil War takes, the war was so nasty that no one is eager for a large scale war like that again.
2) The setting is sparsely populated enough that rival factions don't bump into each other as often.
3) The most psychopathic things in the Warhammer world should not make the transition. For instance, if Dwarfs are included they probably shouldn't have Orange Mohawk warriors looking for endless battle. Orcs should have no one like Grimgor that throw a hissy fit if they don't commit mass murder every week.

Anyway, I'm thinking that a human civilization in this setting that would fit perfectly, and can be one of the human tribes/nation states hailing from the Old World, routed by other stronger forces.

Hmmm, groups fleeing the Old World has a different feel than groups simply leaving.

I'm thinking about Kislev, and in fact, this setting can totally take place in a very artic/snowy region (i do like it cold )
......
Meanwhile troves of tattered humans settle down in their new surroundings, Making homage in this cold, lonely place.

They're at home, yet so far away...

I like the out of the box thinking, but I generally prefer to avoid single biome settings. Star Wars is especially notorious. Except for the planet of Naboo, almost every planet has one thing. Endor and Kashyyk are all forests. Coruscant is one giant city. Hoth is all ice. Tatooine is all desert. Dagobah is all swamp.

I certainly would be up for a cold place being an important place, but the entire setting should probably not be frigid. Maybe do something like with Game of Thrones where seasonal variations are rather extreme. Also, because the setting is magic, we don't have to follow real world climate rules. Maybe there is a tropical jungle that is a mere 400 miles away from a subarctic tundra.

 

[Crowsfoot]

Could you have something like a sun planet that feeds of aggression that is close to exploding and it would destroy the planet so everyone try's to avoid conflict as much as possible.

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

Agreed. I think I pretty much stated overtly that I wanted the hostility toned down a bit, but we definitely need a concrete and well thought out reason for it.

Here's my initial thoughts, we can certainly add on to it.

1) Whatever form the allegory for the American Civil War takes, the war was so nasty that no one is eager for a large scale war like that again.
2) The setting is sparsely populated enough that rival factions don't bump into each other as often.
3) The most psychopathic things in the Warhammer world should not make the transition. For instance, if Dwarfs are included they probably shouldn't have Orange Mohawk warriors looking for endless battle. Orcs should have no one like Grimgor that throw a hissy fit if they don't commit mass murder every week.

I agree with points 1 and 3 a lot. I think it would be interesting if the races were forced to bump into each other a lot more, so i don't agree with point 2 that much.

To slightly cement a reason for this tranquility, i think there needs to be highly beneficial gains for the races when they interact with each other. So for an example, the humans i described could trade with the Lizardmen and other races for things they need to survive.

Also, this wild west setting could totally be super far away from the reaches of other civilizations, which means laws could differ significantly depending upon the hard circumstances these races find them selves on.

This actually leaks onto your point that the setting shouldn't be restricted to one biome, which i agree with as well.

Edit: Now to add on to the Lizardmen...

I think it would be possible to make the Lizardmen much more pacifist, If their beliefs in the Old Ones dramatically shift, due to the extreme climate change that forces them under ground, or into the mountains for warmth.

Due to isolation, from other Lizardmen, their beliefs could shift even further. How these beliefs shift their outlook on the world is up to further imagination, but i was thinking this would make them tolerable of the humans settling on the lands.

The Lizardmen, combined with humans from the fallen Kislev, could make up one of the many regions in this wild west setting.

EDIT:

Okay, so while we're trying to make this wild west setting more tranquil, we shouldn't forget that this is Warhammer, and Warhammer needs conflict.

Not a focus on war, but rather racial tension.

Trade would make it nonsensical in the races' views to war with each other, but i think this wild west setting wouldn't be complete without some sort of darkness that prevails through out the whole setting. I think racial tensions would fit this perfectly.

 

[pendrake]

...but I generally prefer to avoid single biome settings. Star Wars is especially notorious. Except for the planet of Naboo, almost every planet has one thing. Endor and Kashyyk are all forests. Coruscant is one giant city. Hoth is all ice. Tatooine is all desert. Dagobah is all swamp.

In our Solar system single Biome worlds are the norm (albeit most of them with such harsh conditions that no life is known to exist):

Mercury
(crater covered desert furnace world)

Venus
(heat death world with thick noxious atmosphere)

Earth’s Moon, Ceres, etal.
(cratered vacuum worlds)

Mars
(cratered frigid desert world)

Ganymede, Callisto, Pluto, Charon, Tethys, Dione, Enceladus, Rhea, etal.
(rocky frozen ice worlds)

Europa
(ice world with subterranean ocean)

Io
(volcanic molten world)

Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter
(hydrogen gas giants)

 

[pendrake]

Assorted off the cuff reactions...

least one sort of goofy evil faction.

Orcs/Gobbos are ideal for this.

I’m not sure what Western undead.

Watch Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and such to sort this out. Pickup some Deadlands source books at Half-Price Books.

abolition of slavery into the backstory and create a subgroup made up of newly freed ex-slaves.

Make the Dark Elves the newly freed slaves! ...ohh the irony.

Native American allegory race that is not the Lustriecans

Mexicanos. Western movies that don’t have Apaches/Comanches have Mexican Bandidos.

“Lustriecans” ...uugghh. It’s too close to Lustrians, hard to know how to pronounce, ...keep thinking.


Meanwhile I will be pronouncing it:

Lizardmayans

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

-I might want another human nation that either exists alongside or is competing with the main human power.

I think the descendants of Kislev that i was commenting on about could fit this criteria pretty well, in my opinion.

As for the allegory for the Manifest dynasty, the new frontier, and the passing of a devastating civil war, i think Bretonnia would fit well too.

 

[Aginor]

I admit I haven't read through all of it yet (due to time constraints) but when you said Warhammer and Western of course I thought of Lizardmen, and what instantly popped into my mind is this:

Scalenex Edit, original picture isn't loading but it was similar to this.

 

[Scalenex]

Mars

(cratered frigid desert world)

Mars is actually pretty diverse. The "tropical" region of Mars at the equator is roughly what we consider a comfortable room temperature on Earth, about seventy degrees Fahrenheit during the Martian Summer. They have dusty windy deserts. They have rugged mountains. Mars is the most Earthlike planet we know though Venus is closer to Earth size. Venus has varied topography of course but the crazy thick atmosphere turns the planet into an oven with a near uniform temperature.

But your basic statement holds that single biome planets are the norm. But I believe we should stick to the Earth norm of biodiversity. At least we can have three or four biomes.

“Lustriecans” ...uugghh. It’s too close to Lustrians, hard to know how to pronounce, ...keep thinking.

I was never intending Lustriecans to be the permanent name. I just needed a placeholder term. How about we call the Wild West Lizardmen El Saurio Nación. Saurios for short. That's Spanish for “the Dinosaur Nation” at least according to Google. Until further notice, the Wild West lizardmen are called Saurios.

Orcs/Gobbos are ideal for this.

Agreed. I don't know why I even questioned that Orcs and Goblins should be included. Perhaps we need a new period appropriate orcish word for “bang” besides "Dakka dakka"

Make the Dark Elves the newly freed slaves! ...ohh the irony.

Interesting. Probably want to call them something other than "dark elves" though because of real world history that might be a little too on the nose and appear insensitive.

Watch Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and such to sort this out. Pickup some Deadlands source books at Half-Price Books.

I just might have to look that up.

@Aginor. Obviously we need a Saurio sheriff called Rango somewhere, but I want to get the foundation built before we built before we go into individual characters.

Along those lines, I wrote a foundational backstory. I basically rewrote the End Times to make them less severe. The End Times still suck and lots of people died but enough people lived that they could recover and the world itself wasn’t destroyed.

Nothing below is set in stone, but I think I did a reasonable job setting the stage. I set up the stage for a bunch of European-like competing human nations in the Old World, but I haven't figured out what form those nations take, and I left out the lands of Cathay and Ind altogether. We can fill in the blanks later.

 

[Aginor]

They have dusty windy deserts

Well... not by Earth's standards. The atmosphere is so thin that it never feels like wind is blowing. You would need hurricane speeds to even feel something. That would be very dangerous though as the particles are still flying around at that speed and can kill you.
And it is still damn cold there. Those 70 degrees Fahrenheit are rarely reached and as soon as noon is over temperatures drop quite low.

 

[Scalenex]

My original draft I gave each different narrator his/her own special font but that didn't translate when I copied and pasted this from Word, so I had to use colors.

Setting Backstory Part One

The pass was snowed in. No one was progressing any further till the weather improved which would likely take weeks. The makeshift camp grew as more and more travelers become bottle necked there. The children gradually found their way to Ayemer the elven Conjurer who was entertaining them with magical light shows. Eventually more adults gathered around, especially since Ayemer had magically augmented his fire to be extra warm. Even a few dwarfs and goblins came, though they sat as far away from each other as possible.

The kids eventually got tired of Ayemer’s limited array of tricks and got onery.

“A story! We want a story!” one child demanded.

“I’m not one much for tellin' stories” Ayemer said.

“Perhaps, I can be of assistance,” the man who spoke wore the traditional garb of a preacher and had the traditional hammer of Sigmar pendant around his neck.

Reverend Jonas speaks.
Ages ago the Old World was divided into several competing powers. Man fought Elf. Elf fought Dwarf. Elf fought Elf and Man fought Man. As if their own wars with each other were not enough, against all of these nations and tribes stood the four great Chaos gods: Tzeentch, the Changing One; Khorne, the harvester of Skulls; Nurgle, the Bringer of Pestilence; and Slaanesh, the Lord of Debauchery.

The Chaos gods sent their Daemons to plague the living on their unholiest days, but they relied on their living minions most of the time. They created beasts who walked like men in the wild and untamed places. They seduced the hearts of weak willed men and offered them magics and weapons to gain the illusion of power. They created the first Orcs and Goblins to plague mankind. These minions of Chaos nearly brought the feuding nations to their knees.

Pullirk, Goblin cowhand interrupts.
“What! Chaos ain’t our Big Mamma! We created ourselves! We rose from the ground! The first Gobbos rose from spores in the ground. That’s why we’s green like the bushes but we tough as cacti as strong as trees. If our grandfathers got a bit ringy, the Empire of Boys should have protected their stuff better!”

The reverend continues as if the goblin never spoke.

Very slowly, the feuding nations began to fight less. They stopped fighting long enough to fortify themselves against Chaos. The greatest nation of all was the Empire of Man. While their weaponry was primitive compared to today, their engineers created the greatest weapons and tools of their time. Their magic was beyond the wildest dreams of today’s conjurers—No offense good elf, tis’ a fine fire you made. Their mighty rulers and generals rode on the backs of pegasi, griffons, and dragons. Their advisors had the magic to call up on mighty storms, turn living creatures into gold, and even command life and death itself.

Ayemer, adds his expertise.
All My Eye! The Empire of Man learned all their magic from the elves and they done got most their technology from the Dwarves. When the human nations were between Hay and Grass, you needed us both to save your bacon again and again. You humies just bred like rabbits. Once you had numerical superiority over the elder races, you bilked our secrets and pretended you invented ev’rything.

LIke all great nations, the Empire of Man built on the creations of it's predecessors and perfected them.

The Empire of Man grew and absorbed more lands and peoples through marriages, trade alliances and military pacts. Many gratefully joined the Empire for their protection against the forces of Chaos. When nearly all men were under the banner of the Empire, the other civilized races turned to the world’s greatest Empire for succor and together the grand alliance formed the greatest alliance for Order the world had ever seen!

Liouis, Brettonian Farmer offers a different view.
The “protection” offered was rarely protection against Chaos. Most of their "diplomacy" came at the point of a sword. They were bulldozers. The Empire of Man beefed everyone who didn’t bend the knee and hitch their wagons to the great Imperial horse’s ass.

The reverend wrinkled his nose and continued.

Once organized, the grand alliance led by the Empire of Man hemmed in the Chaos tainted savages to the North. They permanently occupied many of the wildest places taming them under ax and plow removing places for Chaos more bestial minions to hide.

To fight the Chaos without, one must fight the Chaos within. The Empire of Man’s inquisitors efficiently rooted out the Chaos worshippers amongst their ranks and those of their allies.

Muddor, Dwarf mining boss adds his two cents.
For every Chaos worshipper they put to the torch, they put at a baker’s dozen worth of innocents in the ground. Necessary? Yes, by gum. But efficient? Hardly. Certainly, not worth boasting about. Oh and we Dwarfs didn’t need the Empire of Man to weed out the Chaos Dwarfs. We whipped our Chaos problem when the Empire of Man was a bunch of tenderfoots scrabbling in the mud.

The reverend sighed in resignation, knowing that the interuptions and interjections would be unceasing.

The Empire of Man was pressing forward against Chaos on all fronts. Chaos feeds on the hearts of sinful mortals and uses mortals as their hands in this world, so they feared they would be cut off from their power and sustenance. In a last desperate gambit, the foul Chaos gods called upon their remaining power to manifest physically in the world to lead their armies directly.

Eva, the medicine woman provides another view.
Pah! Reverend,the Chaos gods didn’t show up in our world because they were losing. The big bugs of the Empire of Man were all corrupt on their own power. This sickness permeated the whole Empire like a festering scab. This was to be their endgame, but like the wicked men they fed off of, the Chaos gods' reach exceeded their grasp.

Indeed they did overreach. While they were able to unleash much death and destruction, by taking physical forms for themselves the four false gods made themselves vulnerable for the first time. The Chaos armies ravaged the world for many years, but eventually they were slain by the greatest heroes of the Empire. With their lords destroyed, their minions were rounded up and slain, saw the light, or simple disappeared.

Liouis interrupts.
More jawing about how great the heroes of the Empire were. They couldn’t find their way out of a barn without help. The daemon gods were big nuts to crack, it took everyone fighting them.

Ayemer, adds
Without the help of the elven wizards the greatest heroes of the Empire wouldn’t have survived long enough to even lay eyes on a Chaos god. Also Slaanesh fell by the hand of elven heroes.

Pullirk adds.
Hate to argy, but the young’uns need to know the truth! T’was Grimgor that slew the Harvester of Skulls. Grimgor the greatest warrior ever lived. Grimgor harvested Khorne’s skull, he did rightly so!

Muddor interjects.
As if one of your kind could make a god take the Big Jump. As it were, my kin destroyed the Plaguebringer.

The deaths of the great daemons are stories best told another evening…

Unfortunately the Old World was in ruins. Less than one man in ten survived. The great castles were ruined. The vast farms lay fallow. Those of royal blood were all slain. Gone was the Empire of Man for all time, but one powerful legacy remained to give light in the darkness. The Imperial Church of Sigmar!

Sensing bemusement from Eva and Muddor and hostility from Liouis, Pulrik and Ayemar, he changed the subject

But perhaps that is a story for another evening as well.

While the great Daemons were dead, they left an enduring legacy of darkness to try to rival the Church’s light. They left the four great Curses. It was long known that Khorne, Harvester of Skulls detested magic as a tool of the weak. After his death. Magic began to diminish in the world. Gone were the days when an entire army would fall under a single wizard’s spell.

Ayemer, adds
Were it not for the Witching Time, I would say wizards came out ahead. Sure magic is less powerful now, but miscasts are a lot less powerful too.

A good segue to the Witching Time as any. Magic did not weaken overnight but over many generations. Most wizards were good and decent men, like Mister Ayemar here, but not all were. Some wizards were desperate to hold on to the source of their power and turned to maleficium. Some turned to blood magic or necromancy. Some sought artifacts left over from the Daemons. Some tried human sacrifice to strengthen their magic

A lot of magical creatures were slain by wizards as well. Many wizards sought to buttress their failing power with the blood, flesh, or bones of magical creatures. Gone were the majestic dragons and the noble unicorns. Also gone were some of the fouler creatures such as Chaos-addled Chimeras.

Ayemer, adds
Y’all can’t blame the wizards for this one. First off, there are more living magical creatures around today than you think. Second off, wizards didn’t kill them all. Sometimes bloodlines just thinned and pegasi and unicorns gave birth to regular horses. Others got killed by nonmagical folk who were simple desperate for grub. There were famines and magical creature’s meat tastes as good as beef or chicken.

My apologies. Wizards were often unfairly blamed for ill fortune. Unfortunately a few decent wizards and their non-magical confederates were executed for witchcraft unjustly.

Liouis interrupts.
More than a “a few.” I bet y’all can guess which Church did them witch burnings. Also a good excuse to go after the faithful to the Lady and anyone else who didn’t kiss Sigmar’s dead ass.

The Preacher stopped to glare at the Brettonian, then regained his composure.

Perhaps it is best we cover the other Curses. When the daemons walked the earth, far more men, women, and children died from sickness and famine caused by the daemon’s filth than from the claws and swords of the filthy daemons. Nurgle was responsible for most of it. When Nurgle died he released a horde of rats who walked like men to harry and infect the survivors.

Eva the medicine woman provides another view.
Once again the preacher leaves much out. These rats who walked like men were called Skaven, They were not created by Nurgle’s death. They existed for many generations prior. They bred. They took poisons into their bodies. The bred. They created new poisons to infect the good peoples of the world…and to infect the green folk too. They bred. The Skaven worshipped their own foul horned god, but they didn’t cotton to the fact their god didn’t truly exist. They were Nurgle’s unwitting puppets all along.

The Skaven were a yellow lot and didn’t want to war on the Empire of Man till they had powerful numbers. Generations of consuming poisons left them sterile as mules. They birthed litters of young’uns only by the grace of Nurgle. When Nurgle died they couldn’t breed no more. If they were going to all take dirt naps, they vowed to put the rest of us into the ground first. They thought iff’n they could do that their horned god would let them breed again. Fortunately, they failed or we wouldn’t be here talk’in ‘bout ‘em.

Pullirk interrupted.
Rats is hard to kill! They ain’t all dead. They just cooled their heels a bit till the heats off. My cousin heard it from another gobbo who heard it from an orc who knew another gobbo who done saw a walkin’ breathin’ ratman!

Muddor shouts him down.
Bite your tongue, you filthy green varmit! The Skaven are all dead and never comin’ back!

Excuse me, I thought I was telling the story! Slaanesh curse was levied on the elves…err perhaps Ayemer would rather tell this part.

Ayemer adds
No, I want to hear the Breeders’ version of what happened to my people.

Very well. Elves came from a beautiful horseshoe shaped island called Ulthuan. Ulthuan held the greatest motherlode of magic in the Old World. But long ago there was a dispute over who would rule the Empire of Elves. The elves split in two groups with some living on Ulthuan and some moving up the lands north of here known as Naggaroth. Which group did you hail from, conjurer?

Ayemer smirks
Both. Couch your words carefully, preacher.

Ah. Well the elves of Naggaroth tried to reclaim Ulthuan for themselves many times, but after Khorne’s curse weakened the magic in the world. Ulthuan began to sink. This sinking was slow, so the elves had many years to prepare for this. The Elves of Ulthuan turned the tables and they invaded Naggaroth. Elves were and still are more magical than humans, so they were hit harder by the loss of magic in the world. Naggaroth was ruled by a wizard king and sorceress queen mother. They couldn’t survive the weakening of their magic, and they died without leaving a clear successor so the Ulthuan Elves were able to surprise and overwhelm a leaderless enemy.

The two elf groups became one again though not without hardship and bloodshed. The sinking of Ulthuan was terrible, but it was not Slaanesh’s Curse. Before the death of Slaanesh, elves enjoyed very long lifespans, sometimes living over a thousand years. After Slaanesh’s Curse few elves get very far into their second century.

Pulrik quips
I wouldn’t mind living to two hundred…

Eva disagrees
Yes, it would be nice to live that long, but no, the elves’ reduction in life was not due to the Lord of Debauchery, at least not directly. During the Witching Times, when angry vile men could not find actual witches, so they turned against elves. There weren’t many elves near human lands, and they had the worst time of it.

Any elf they found outside Ulthuan or Naggaroth they murdered. At least they murdered the menfolk. The she-elves, they got worse. They done birthed half-elves. So few elves survived the Daemon Wars and the Witching Times that the elves of Naggaroth couldn’t afford to turn away the refugees from the Old World, even halfbloods. The half-bloods done bred back in with the proper elves and this brought human mortality to the elves. Slaanesh is only responsible as much he is for spurring on the rapacious appetites of men.

Liouis corrects her.
There were a lot more elves in the Old World than you think. Many dwelled in the ancient forests. After Ulthuan and Naggaroth had their last war there were of these Wood Elves than all other Elves combined. The Wood Elves were in cahoots with the ancient spirits of the land, but by and by their forests were either cut down by the Empire of Man’s axes or burned down by the Armies of Chaos. What little was left was tenaciously held by the Wood Elves and their adopted kin, but Slaanesh banished the spirits of the forest away into slumber and they dragged their elf allies with them. This is the real Curse of Slaanesh, but the Wood Elves still live. They merged with the earth itself and interbred with the spirits. Even out west, you’ll notice the spirits have lithe features and prominent elf-style ears.

Hmmm, I never heard about Wood Elves before.

That just leaves the Curse of Tzeentch. Tzeentch did not curse the people directly but he cursed the land warping it. Some lands fell into the sea. Sturdy buildings collapsed. Fertile plains became deserts. Mountains rose and fell. Animals mutated and died.

Even though the human population was recovering, the Curse of Tzeentch changed the land so much, so that there were more natural barriers separating the old lands of the Empire. A number of smaller states formed.

Muddor disagrees.
No, Reverend, this was not Tzeentch’s Curse. The changes you describe came when the Chaos Moon broke apart and fell from the sky. The falling warpstone tainted the land.

Tzeentch’s Curse was the creation of the Deadlands. Before the Chaos Curses, this continent was known as the “Southlands”. The Southlands was not as fertile or welcoming as either the Old World or the New World, but it was not the mass grave it is today.

There used ta be an ancient Dwarf hold there. There used ta be human nations and tribes here outside the reach of the Empire of Man. I heard tell of an Elf colony. They may have even had their own breed of Southlands Saurios. Tzeentch put them all in the ground and cursed the land so nothin' ever grow there again.

Pulrik corrects him
Wrong beardy. Tzeentch was called the Lord of Change, so his big Curse changed things, see? Where do you think all the new monsters came from? Ain’t no more unicorns, but now we got new baddies like wendigo, floating heads, camasotz, chupacaberas and worst of all…the jackalopes!

Eva disagrees
No, that was not Tzeentch’s curse either. The Deadlands became the Deadlands because that is where most of the pieces of the Chaos moon landed when they fell. The new monsters spawned not because of Tzeentch’s curse but again because of the falling pieces of the Chaos moon.

Tzeentch was also said to be the most cunning of his kin. Since he's only playin' possum, Tzeentch left no curse upon mortals with his dying breath. He is merely biding his time.

Some of the children shivered and not from the cold.

Muddor objects.
Bite your tongue, woman! Tzeentch is dead and never comin' back!

It is getting late, perhaps it is time the children hit the hay.

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

Nice! I'm waiting (patiently) for more background fluff of this wild west setting

floating heads

 

[Scalenex]

Flying Heads are one of my favorite Native American legends. The wikipedia article is here. I would very much like to adapt this legend to Warhammer. In the original version I heard they levitated, they didn't have wings, but now that I think of it, wings would make a more interesting model or drawing.

Big strong flying heads that crave human flesh, but despite their presumably large brains are gullible and easily tricked.

 

[Y'ttar Scaletail]

I'm a little saddened I wasn't shouted at to join in on this discussion. Was my tongue-in-cheek love letter in the form of Felrix and Co really that bad?

Will try and properly read everything.

However, in terms of undead you have already hit on Ghost Rider. Perhaps something also similar to what I did with Doc Bones and have certain skeletal gunslingers have a control over dust and sand, being able to conjure minor storms?

Also an alterantive Clan Eshin that are hankerchief'd train robbers would probably work.

 

[Scalenex]

I'm a little saddened I wasn't shouted at to join in on this discussion. Was my tongue-in-cheek love letter in the form of Felrix and Co really that bad?

I am so used to you contributing good things to the fluff forum that I took it as a given you would join in event without an @Y'ttar Scaletail. I will not take our fluff friendship for granted again.

EDIT: You should put a hyperlink in your post to shill for more views and likes on your old work.

Also an alternative Clan Eshin that are hankerchief'd train robbers would probably work.

The idea in fact crossed my mind. My thought was to return Skaven to the original roots of "Most people assume they don't really exist, but they do." I'm curious to see your opinion on the "new" Skaven that I allude to above.

I'm working on a part two for my backstory but here is a spoiler for what I'm thinking of. After the four Chaos gods died (or were presumed to have died, maybe they banished or mutated) the Chaos moon broke apart and rained meteorites on the earth.

If that much warpstone rained down on the Warhammer Fantasy world, everyone would either be dead outright or the Skaven would be ruling over the ragged survivors of the other races in a dystopian hellhole, but by the time the Chaos moon fell from the sky in this narrative, Warpstone was only a tiny fraction as potent as it used to be. Potent enough to mutate some creatures and spawn some new monsters when it fell to earth in large quantities but not potent enough to destroy the world or end civilization.

What little power remained in the warpstone was spent over the next century or two as magic waned across the globe. At this point warpstone became completely inert and changed from glowing green to black. It became the coal deposits that fed the Age of Steam Power that would eventually come.

 

[Y'ttar Scaletail]

You should put a hyperlink in your post to shill for more views and likes on your old work.

Funnily enough I was re-reading those and was considering trying to finish the horsemen arc, once i'm not drowning in cross stitching and Moulder Pitfighters.

I'm working on a part two for my backstory but here is a spoiler for what I'm thinking of. After the four Chaos gods died (or were presumed to have died, maybe they banished or mutated) the Chaos moon broke apart and rained meteorites on the earth.

If that much warpstone rained down on the Warhammer Fantasy world, everyone would either be dead outright or the Skaven would be ruling over the ragged survivors of the other races in a dystopian hellhole, but by the time the Chaos moon fell from the sky in this narrative, Warpstone was only a tiny fraction as potent as it used to be. Potent enough to mutate some creatures and spawn some new monsters when it fell to earth in large quantities but not potent enough to destroy the world or end civilization.

What little power remained in the warpstone was spent over the next century or two as magic waned across the globe. At this point warpstone became completely inert and changed from glowing green to black. It became the coal deposits that fed the Age of Steam Power that would eventually come.

Morsslieb actually being made of Warpstone has altered between authors (iirc Werner who wrote a lot of Skaven fiction had one Seer comment (it might have even been Thanquol) that he had once viewed Morrslieb through a Skryre telescope and found it to be grey rock and not Warpstone), from End Times it can be assumed that it is actually a form of Warpstone. Thing is, how pure and potent is the Warpstone from the moon? There are mentions of Warpstone meteorites from Morrslieb, so maybe there is some power to it? Or did the meteorites actually come from a different source? Is most of the moon a Fool's Warpstone or inert Warpstone that obtains it's magical properties from hitting the magically saturated atmosphere? There have been no Skaven cosmonauts to report any truth on this matter. So who truly knows how powerful Morrslieb was?

/rambling Ratty

 

[Scolenex]

Instead of calling it "Warhammer Wild West", do we want to invent a John Henry like character to stand in for Sigmar? Then we call the setting Rail-hammer!

Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue...

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

Had a random thought about the Greenskins. I think it would be cool if the Goblins vastly out numbered the Orcs, 10:1