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 Mr Morden wrote:

If a Chaos barbarian was a playable character in Silver Tower, why not orruks? It also makes a lot more sense than a "good" undead guy

I would be happy with either / both - but why would a "good" undead character be so strange.

I hadn't thought about that, but now I really want one of the heroes to be an undead. Even if it just follows the trope of "broke free from control" etc. Or maybe a recently "Nagashed" human/stormcast/other race that just can't let go. Or someone properly peeved at being bitten by a Vampire, but doesn't completely turn for one reason or another, and now just wants to muderdeathkill every fanged git in the city?

A Flesheater could easily be fluffed up to have regained their lucidity and be an actual ogre-sized undead lawful good knight. Heck is says in the Flesheater faction briefing that they consider themselvs allied to the Stormcast (it just never works out)

Or any sentient undead could be sent by a rival vampire to help take out this wolfman guy.

Danny76 wrote:
Yeah. If everything is shown it would sort of lessen it.

We are back to full releases in March. So could easily be one of the 4 weekends there..

Yeah I originally thought April but especially with them mentioning this model will be available "soon" I get the feeling March might be more likely.

Really love the model- I prefer the Satyr type Kurnothi but she's a great model and could mean the Kurnothi are a bit more mixed- like the DoK. She has the soul pod in her belly like the others so they aren't straight up Aelves.
Really looking forward to cursed city now- every model they have shown so far looks great to me.

 Mr Morden wrote:

If a Chaos barbarian was a playable character in Silver Tower, why not orruks? It also makes a lot more sense than a "good" undead guy

I would be happy with either / both - but why would a "good" undead character be so strange.

Because it's fashionable to denigrate the undead, I should think. Nagash made some unpopular decisions lately and one of the more unfortunate decisions the lore writers made was Nagash's overbearing role in Grand Alliance Death. It hardly leaves room for interesting internal dynamics and is only reinforced by GW strictly sticking with undead for the faction instead of allowing mixed living and undead "Cities of Nagash" armies, at least on the tabletop. I think there's a widespread perception of if you're undead, you're a minion of Nagash and just as guilty as he is because of this.

It's a general problem with AoS for me. Mortal agendas are far in the background while the focus is on the gods and their mindless drones. It's a bit too simplistic for my taste.

I certainly hope we'll see an undead character in the mix, but the way it's set up something like that would probably be left for a story expansion box, what with all the fanatics dominating the original party. As in, those go in first to rid the city of its (rightful ) rulers, stuff goes sideways, first expansion comes out to introduce a new undead dude(tte) who has its own plans for the city but not the means to see them through without striking a grudging alliance with the original heroes.

I really like what GW did with Silver Tower, releasing a card pack for clampack characters so you could play a hero from the faction you like best. I was happy with the Darkoath Chieftain but certainly didn't hesitate to buy and paint a Wight King specifically for that game. I'm hoping for good representation of factions in Cursed City as well, although maybe I need to temper that hope now that we get to "enjoy" playing GW's heroes rather than our own.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

I'm starting to see a pattern here. GW's really going for the antisocial murderhobo mob with the heroes, aren't they?

They know their target audience

Yes, but they could broaden their audience and try to cater to people other than myself.

I think an Undead hero would work great for this game. Warhammer doesn't really work well for D&D-style personal power fantasies, so oddly a character like Genevieve from Drachenfels where you get all the benefits and none of the penalties doesn't fit, it's more about power nightmares where you get all of the penalties, and all of the benefits get recontextualized into being additional penalties. But you could make a great tortured hero, or anti-hero who is undead but still thinks for themselves.

*cough*Tomb King*cough*

Not that I would expect to see such a thing even if GW does add one or more undead heroes to this.

 frankelee wrote:
I think an Undead hero would work great for this game. Warhammer doesn't really work well for D&D-style personal power fantasies, so oddly a character like Genevieve from Drachenfels where you get all the benefits and none of the penalties doesn't fit, it's more about power nightmares where you get all of the penalties, and all of the benefits get recontextualized into being additional penalties. But you could make a great tortured hero, or anti-hero who is undead but still thinks for themselves.

Genevieve had quite a few weakneses - silver/ hawthorn/fire/ no reflection etc and despite her actions was never really accepted - great bit in the last novel about her when about to be lynched by a mob in Altdorf she reminds them she saved the Emperor and is met with "Yeah but what have you done for us lately" Ulrika is also another goosd example and thats not even considering how often Neferata's Sisterhood assists against Chaos (and other Vampires) - self interest but long term.

Because it's fashionable to denigrate the undead, I should think. Nagash made some unpopular decisions lately and one of the more unfortunate decisions the lore writers made was Nagash's overbearing role in Grand Alliance Death. It hardly leaves room for interesting internal dynamics and is only reinforced by GW strictly sticking with undead for the faction instead of allowing mixed living and undead "Cities of Nagash" armies, at least on the tabletop. I think there's a widespread perception of if you're undead, you're a minion of Nagash and just as guilty as he is because of this.

AOS - agreed - although worship of Nagash is still allowed in some cities and several of the recent Neferata novels have dealt with the infighting between the Undead as much as the struggle against Chaos and/or Sigmar. Its a pity Josh Reynolds is no longer on board as I think we would have seen more and better undead stories and characters. I guess you could argue that as Nagash becomes more and more in control of Shyish, so the dead become more like him?

In terms of the new game A Deathrattle hero come to free the people - Living and Dead from the vampires would work really well as would the Flesh-eater crusading knight. We don;t know where the city is in Shyish but it may be important enough for Neferata or Mannfred to send someone to take over the city or eliminate the current ruler.

Lots of possibilities.

Or like Richter Kreugar, captain of the Cursed Company (Dogs of War). Mercenary in life who betrayed the necromancer he was working for, and the necromancer cursed him with his dying breath. Richter's flesh withered away and he died on the spot, only to rise up the next morning in skeletal form, and rising again every time he was struck down in battle in the centuries since. Those he slayed joined his skeleton company's ranks. After becoming one of them, he hasn't been a fan of the undead.

Speaking of them, it would be nice if the game would include some non-human undead. Always liked the Cursed Company sculpts of especially the skeletal Skaven, Goblin and Orcs. An undead Ogre could be fun.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
Or like Richter Kreugar, captain of the Cursed Company (Dogs of War). Mercenary in life who betrayed the necromancer he was working for, and the necromancer cursed him with his dying breath. Richter's flesh withered away and he died on the spot, only to rise up the next morning in skeletal form, and rising again every time he was struck down in battle in the centuries since. Those he slayed joined his skeleton company's ranks. After becoming one of them, he hasn't been a fan of the undead.

Speaking of them, it would be nice if the game would include some non-human undead. Always liked the Cursed Company sculpts of especially the skeletal Skaven, Goblin and Orcs. An undead Ogre could be fun.

Yep another good example (I still ahve those models - very cool) ! There are some Ghost Orcs in the stories and risen zombies of lots of races but not models :(

It seemed to be going ina more intersting way with the Merc rules in one of the Generals Handbook but oh well.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 frankelee wrote:
I think an Undead hero would work great for this game. Warhammer doesn't really work well for D&D-style personal power fantasies, so oddly a character like Genevieve from Drachenfels where you get all the benefits and none of the penalties doesn't fit, it's more about power nightmares where you get all of the penalties, and all of the benefits get recontextualized into being additional penalties. But you could make a great tortured hero, or anti-hero who is undead but still thinks for themselves.

Genevieve had quite a few weakneses - silver/ hawthorn/fire/ no reflection etc and despite her actions was never really accepted - great bit in the last novel about her when about to be lynched by a mob in Altdorf she reminds them she saved the Emperor and is met with "Yeah but what have you done for us lately" Ulrika is also another goosd example and thats not even considering how often Neferata's Sisterhood assists against Chaos (and other Vampires) - self interest but long term.

Yeah, this is what I mean by power fantasy, it's like saying Edward is maybe too shiny and beautiful when he steps into the sunlight, so that's a real negative. I didn't mean to say she was Jesus Christ post-resurrection level powerful when I was talking about penalties and therefore totally unkillable, I mean she as a vampire doesn't have to murder people to live, isn't a twisted, hateful being, with a predatory, wolf-like face, and seems to retain all of her soul and regular consciousness. GW's Vampire Counts artwork does a great job displaying what a true dark fantasy vampire should be, they can look beautiful sometimes, but even then they look evil as a devil, and a lot of the time they have hideous, demonic faces, with souls to match. It's like yeah you live forever, as a monster. Yeah you have incredible strength and agility, which you use to murder the innocent with.

Not to say she doesn't work as a character, just that she doesn't mesh well with Warhammer, in either its more adult WFRP 1st sense, or the more teenage-ish WBF 5th ed. and onward. Any undead hero in this game should at least be unhappy. At least that's my opinion, in case anyone thought I was laying down law.

 frankelee wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 frankelee wrote:
I think an Undead hero would work great for this game. Warhammer doesn't really work well for D&D-style personal power fantasies, so oddly a character like Genevieve from Drachenfels where you get all the benefits and none of the penalties doesn't fit, it's more about power nightmares where you get all of the penalties, and all of the benefits get recontextualized into being additional penalties. But you could make a great tortured hero, or anti-hero who is undead but still thinks for themselves.

Genevieve had quite a few weakneses - silver/ hawthorn/fire/ no reflection etc and despite her actions was never really accepted - great bit in the last novel about her when about to be lynched by a mob in Altdorf she reminds them she saved the Emperor and is met with "Yeah but what have you done for us lately" Ulrika is also another goosd example and thats not even considering how often Neferata's Sisterhood assists against Chaos (and other Vampires) - self interest but long term.

Yeah, this is what I mean by power fantasy, it's like saying Edward is maybe too shiny and beautiful when he steps into the sunlight, so that's a real negative. I didn't mean to say she was Jesus Christ post-resurrection level powerful when I was talking about penalties and therefore totally unkillable, I mean she as a vampire doesn't have to murder people to live, isn't a twisted, hateful being, with a predatory, wolf-like face, and seems to retain all of her soul and regular consciousness. GW's Vampire Counts artwork does a great job displaying what a true dark fantasy vampire should be, they can look beautiful sometimes, but even then they look evil as a devil, and a lot of the time they have hideous, demonic faces, with souls to match. It's like yeah you live forever, as a monster. Yeah you have incredible strength and agility, which you use to murder the innocent with.

Not to say she doesn't work as a character, just that she doesn't mesh well with Warhammer, in either its more adult WFRP 1st sense, or the more teenage-ish WBF 5th ed. and onward. Any undead hero in this game should at least be unhappy. At least that's my opinion, in case anyone thought I was laying down law.

fair enough as you say each to their own - I like vampire ladies in particular - although Genevieve does have a inhuman predatory face like other vampires- its often mentioned when she loses control. I think she fits perfectly with the older and newer lore but thats just me.

What about Ossiarchs?

City full of dead bodies? Why wouldn't the Bonereapers want to come collect an extra tithe helping?

Could be a good excuse for coming up with a funky new Bonereaper character

exiled for mysterious reasons the bonereaper known as barry/kevin/dave only knew it needed a really, really big tithe to get back into Nagash's good books, and the this new city of the dead seemed a good place to start

JSG wrote:
Muh tactical rock.

Back in the day people had a fetish for combat stilettos. Now they have a fetish for high ground.

 DeadEyeDuk wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

If a Chaos barbarian was a playable character in Silver Tower, why not orruks? It also makes a lot more sense than a "good" undead guy

I would be happy with either / both - but why would a "good" undead character be so strange.

I hadn't thought about that, but now I really want one of the heroes to be an undead. Even if it just follows the trope of "broke free from control" etc. Or maybe a recently "Nagashed" human/stormcast/other race that just can't let go. Or someone properly peeved at being bitten by a Vampire, but doesn't completely turn for one reason or another, and now just wants to muderdeathkill every fanged git in the city?

Not mentioning Spike from Buffy, more relevant for this discussion is Alucard from the most exelent "Castlevania: symphony of the night", and Vampire hunter D from, well, "Vampire hunter D".
Yes both Castlevania and D is resonating deeply in the cursed city theme.

That said, it would be an obvious narrative twist if Jelsen Darrock turns out to suffer from vampirism himself; if it was the result of beeing bitten it would explain both his hatred for the undead, his cruel and inhuman methods, and also his expulsion from the order.

We already have existing background elements to support powerful spirits being on the side of Order, I seem to remember a paragraph talking about a Banshee that aided in the defence of her former home in life somewhere. Could stand to reason that a powerful member of the city council resisted the lure of the Wolf and remained an enemy in death?

warl0rdb0b wrote:
We already have existing background elements to support powerful spirits being on the side of Order, I seem to remember a paragraph talking about a Banshee that aided in the defence of her former home in life somewhere. Could stand to reason that a powerful member of the city council resisted the lure of the Wolf and remained an enemy in death?

https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Celemnis

Like alot of the Dead (and the alliance of Order in fact) She is less on the side of order and against Chaos who tortured and killed her.

But agreed there are a great many possibilities for Undead here.

I’ve been taking a few looks at the Cursed City Website image of the paladin style character with the sword. If you zoom on the face, it seems to me that his/her left ear is pointed. Could this be a Sigmar worshipping elf?

I would love if GW just had fun. Throw in some really random characters that have a shared goal. Who cares... its fun, and cool new models.

I still don’t understand how people keep getting “Order” confused with “good” and “Death” confused with evil, as though they are in abject opposition.
Please remember that fascism and communism are both ordered systems just as feudal monarchy and democratic oligarchy are; “Order” covers an incredibly broad range. Death, on the other hand, is by comparison almost too narrow; at the moment it is “mind controlling tyranny” and that’s about it, but that’s mostly because of Nagash being a complete bastard. It used to be about ultimate justice and the final refuge from Chaos. Then Nagash killed/ate/usurped all the other gods of death.

Anyway, the point is that order and death aren’t opposites; they’re (supposed to be) complements and a whole bunch of the Dead still remember that, even if they’re not allowed to act on it normally, or at least not on a grand scale. So random individual dead people not being complete monsters is actually expected.

Of course, with goobers like Katakros running around, I’m not totally surprised people get the wrong idea sometimes.
My only hope is that they are going to follow up on the hints that they have been dropping that Nagash’s control is not quite as absolute as either he thinks it is, or it once was…

Considering the writing quality of the battletomes I'm not surprised that people get confused impressions of the factions and their members. I still remember rolling my eyes at how GW tried to point out the tyrannical side of Order in the Sigmarine book to make them look oh so grimdark while at the same time unquestionably painting them as objective good guys. It read... schizophrenic? Chaos and Death get a similar treatment.

It's not like you can't write nuanced fiction that includes and balances positives and negatives, bit it's not an art the studio writers seem to be capable of. Instead they throw in hints of nuance and potential only to double down on the defining stereotypes that get repeated over and over, page for page.

It doesn't help that GW in recent years has switched over to making gods and heroes central to the narratives and tying faction identities closer to exemplars than ever. It just puts up another barrier to seeing the broader faction behind the character.

I still remember rolling my eyes at how GW tried to point out the tyrannical side of Order in the Sigmarine book to make them look oh so grimdark while at the same time unquestionably painting them as objective good guys. It read... schizophrenic?

They tried writing them like space marines, and since they're not, it came across schizophrenic. I was furious at the ham-fisted grimdarkization in the 2nd ed battletome for stormcast.

And yes, Death could've been so much more, and so could Destruction and Chaos, but GW forces it's narrow cartoonish vision from 40k into everything they write so we got...Order that tries to be good guys but has ostensibly evil factions, Death that is just Nagash, Destruction that has no space to grow since everyone must worship the greenskin god, and Chaos that is just as one-note as it's 40k counterpart despite not being saddled with galaxy's sorest losers to back up the lack of civilization. Like, chaos should absolutely have kingdoms (or kinkdoms for Slaanesh followers), not just marauding hordes of endless destruction. We even have that in some of the BL books, but it never, ever gets carried over to battletomes.

Yeah, Chaos could have been so much more than the craziness of AoS. GW doesn't seem to want forces of Chaos as represented any other way than as berserkers inhabiting insane hell dimensions, full of blood rain and rocks made from screaming souls being what fortresses are built from, like every place Chaos takes over turns into a Daemon World in the Eye of Terror from 40K where eventually everything would stagnate and everyone mortal would starve. Chaos Undivided especially could be just a dark and dismal opposite of the forces of Sigmar.

Almost like a version of Sylvania and the Empire's Great Forest from the Old World, where an elevated Lord controls everything locally, their Warriors are the upper class and the conquered peasants form the workforce. When they weren't out waging war, you would still have Chaos knights roving around and protecting their valued meal tickets from the warped beasts that the animals and debased people are turned into by the alteration of the winds of magic flowing through the area.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, Chaos could have been so much more than the craziness of AoS.

More how, exactly?

Chaos was, in the past, consistently depicted as evil and, ultimately, self destructive. Whatever it creates, is doomed to wither and die, because that's the ultimate goal of the Chaos Powers - an existence comprised solely of them.

Those cultist cities we sometimes hear about might look neat from a distance, but then someone has to explain how they actually work as a functional society, DESPITE the corrupting influence of Chaos, and it all falls apart at the seams.

You'd have to re-frame Chaos within the setting to make it more than a delivery system for crazy.

eh, Chaos doesn't equate with actual anarchy until you get into the warp itself, where the rules of existence are different anyway.

Chaos as it in practice in the "real world" is a more despotic might makes right type society that is pretty straight forward in how it works, its just the extra details always make it seem absurd.

Honestly, if you want a good example, think of the Terran Empire from the Mirrorverse from Star Trek.
And empire that seems stable on the outside, but constant infighting and threats to your life make it seem very chaotic and prone to wild shifts in power.

there is a specific kingdom of Khorne in the recent Neferata book which is organised and effective under a Deamon Prince from Hysh - it is geared towards war but it works in the novel.

Anyone can be in the group if the situation is desperate enough, but having non-order (especially chaos) heroes in the group almost always end up with some backstabbing a the end. But that's not really relevant in term of gameplay, because they won't be implementing that kind of mechanic into the game.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
And empire that seems stable on the outside, but constant infighting and threats to your life make it seem very chaotic and prone to wild shifts in power.

This is how real-world fascist regimes tend to be, in contrast to the silly Hollywood-Nazi myth of a highly efficient, ordered and disciplined society. Fascist Italy, Germany and (to a somewhat lesser degree) Spain were full of petty backstabbing and really hilarious levels of corruption, with rules that changed with the leader's whims and an ideology that pretended to be rigid and unstinting but was actually constantly twisted into new loopholes in the name of expediency (e.g. the Japanese being declared 'honorary Aryans'). The trains actually didn't run on time - that was mostly propaganda. Propaganda was really the only thing the fascists were good at.

So I think a 'functional' Chaos-based society would probably look a lot like a fascist one, but as fascist societies really were rather than the Hollywood version.

Either that or anarcho-capitalism. But nobody has ever been able to make that work, so a 'functional' ancap society might be an oxymoron...

EDIT: I guess my point is that a functional Chaos-based state would probably present itself to both its own citizens and everyone else as a civilized, ordered sort of place, and the actual Chaos stuff (rampant selfishness, individualist power-seeking, human sacrifice, etc.) would all go on behind a screen of skilled propaganda and manipulation. Even the worship of the Chaos Gods would probably be hidden within a system of occult symbolism. Aaaand... I just realised I am describing Nochseed here (the Cypher Lords' city-state in Hysh). So this actually does already exist in AoS.

There was a great thread on 4chan a while back about Chaos society, starting from the question on who would do something as mundane as manufacture paper in a society that is essentially a very violent meritocracy, and ended up at Skaven urchins and CMOT Dibbler types selling street food to chaos warriors.