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2016/02/24 23:25:43
Subject: [Dragon Rampant] Tell us about your army!
I'm getting into Dragon Rampant, and as a writer as well as a wargamer, one my favorite parts of this hobby is coming up with fluff. This is actually one of the main draws for me to this game, the idea that your army could be anything you want. But I am having trouble coming up with fluff for my army while trying not to contradict anyone else's, working in a vacuum if you will. I want my army to be able to mesh with other's to create theatrical battles with interesting fluff.
So to get an idea of what's already out there and inspiration for my own army, I wanted to ask if anyone on this forum has a dragon rampant army they would like to share. Below is my fluff:
Spoiler:
Thousands of years ago, Mortals waged war on a monster known as Zarch, the King of Diseases. The price of this war was great, but in the end Zarch was slain, flooding the valleys of Deyrune with his blood. His blood would seep into the soil of the valleys and kill all life, leaving only disease and twisted mutations behind.
Millennia later, the forbidden valleys of Deyrune still hold life only for the strong, forests of sickening mushrooms grow out of soil rich with death. Believing nothing could survive here, The Dwarves of Ironhold forced the Orcs of the black-fang tribe into the valleys. But the vile mushroom spore transformed them from animalistic savages into smarter, stronger and more aggressive red versions of themselves, that would be called Dark or Chaos Orcs. Seeing what they had done, the dwarves created walls and traps to keep the orcs in Deyrune forever, but their war with the Dark Orcs would end in defeat with the Orcs freeing themselves.
Five hundred years would pass. Today the Dark Orcs, or 'Dokkles', have create a rough feudalism, serving a threesome-council called the Kozdaroth, who interpret the will of the Dokkle pantheon, the 'Kozdar'. This makes up the nation Dokatar, which encompasses deyrune and some surrounding territories, and to this day the Dark Orcs wage a xenophobic war on the 'Cleanskins', a catch-all term for all non-dark orc.
(As you can see I have about five hundred years to account for, but a working outline none-the-less. I was hoping hearing you guy's armies would help.)
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/02/24 23:27:24
2016/02/25 13:48:28
Subject: Re:[Dragon Rampant] Tell us about your army!
I haven't done too much worldbuilding for/because of Dragon Rampant, but the 'take whatever you want' attitude and the smaller army size, has pushed me into playing with the background of the Warhammer World. I've been buying up models and bits for at least five different forces, but I can only show off fluff 'cos I've little else built so far.
The Everqueen's Guard: in the vein of Bad Squidoo and Victoria Miniatures. Also because old metal maiden guard models cost a bomb on ebay. The initial idea was to convert a unit of these to act as elite foot or offensive heavy foot. At the mo the plan is to use phoenix guard bodies and halberds, plastic maiden guard legs, and I'm waiting for Statuesque pulp-scale bald heads to graft some helmets onto. I've also started gathering bits for maiden guard knights, and plan to stick Alarielle in a chariot in a sorta-kinda Boudicca imitation. Along with more generic spearmen and archers, and maybe regular plastic maiden guard as scouts.
Prince of Chrace: aye, two high elf forces, but I can't resist. A unit of white lion knights, the prince and his closest retainers. No, riding horses, not lions; but one of the unit will be a lion, in a kinda-sorta Yvain imitation. Then regular white lions as bellicose foot, generic spearmen and archers etc. etc. I might use a chariot or a unit of reavers here, as well. I think they're appropriate for lionhunters.
Raiders of Hag Graef: an excuse to buy Jes Goodwin's cold ones; an excuse to buy Julie Guthrie's hydra; an excuse to use that Malus Darkblade mini I've had lying around for ages; and an excuse to buy some stormcast liberators to act as dark, sorcerous constructs. (In a sinda-korta Talos/Minaton imitation) I bought the knight excelsior upgrade kit for them, as vaguely more elfy iconography than a big hammer, and I like it so much that I think I'll adopt it as the symbol of my Hag Graef, and try to sculpt or pressmould it on my other DE minis. Seeing it as an eclipsed sun is reasonably appropriate for dark elves in general, and the Hag's shadowed situation.
Ogres of the Moot: this is an old project, going back to sixth ed Warhammer. I liked the idea of an ogre army (in plastic) but preferred the older fluff and look of norse ogres settling around the fringes of the empire. I'm also a bit of a nut for hobbits and halflings, particularly the old, old Citadel C11 halflings. Fortunately the fluff of ogres migrating west, working as mercenaries (or bodyguards), adopting other cultures, loving good food and having some weird affinity with halflings, meshed well with Warhammer halflings being great cooks but suffering raids from the Black Mountains. All it needed was a great deal of putty work to dress the ogres in more european-style rags. It ground to a halt because I quickly got fed up with too many aspects of Warhammer's rules. Plus, I didn't fancy shoehorning stubborn halflings into cowardly gnoblar unit profiles, and it was going to be difficult grabbing enough C11s to fill the units anyway. Again, Dragon Rampant's inclusivity and smaller requirements help, and the ogres are back in the queue. Though maybe after some elves.
Skaven: pretty straightfoward. I had bought a lot of Island of Blood minis to use in KoW or other big-battle games, but post-Warhammer the idea of sprawling 28mm battles is steadily losing it's sparkle. Dragon Rampant came along at the right time! Fluffwise, I like Clan Grutnik from the 'uniforms and heraldry' book: a clan with a rich warpstone mine that pays for lots of moulder and skryre goodies. It'll also be an opportunity to convert some mutated mine slaves. Although there's another clan that catches my fancy, somehow.
The Red Baron: it's sorta before my time, but I still miss older fluff of Chaos cults and forces arising in the old world, as opposed to the more recent attitude of Kislev's northern border being the strict delineation between 'Chaos' and 'everyone else'. Also the motivations being more subtle and varied than MAIMING (now CANNIBALISM, I guess), or MAGIC, or SOMEHOW BEING SICK MAKES YOU FAT, or WOBBLY BITS. So if Mousillon can have a bunch of bretonnian vampires, I can have a bretonnian lord who got a bit too obsessed with martial prowess and now wanders the land with his retinue in the service of Khorne. GW questing knights, in red, Fireforge infantry. Bosh.
That last one came about after digging about in my lead and realising I had enough random Chaos characters and models to do a few small Song-Of-Blades sized gangs. The Khorne one just grew in the daydreaming. The others are a happy-go-lucky Nurgle band like ye olde Mordheim Carnival of Chaos; a secretive Slaaneshi society of gluttons, narcissists, anal-retentives etc.; and a fallen son of imperial nobility, a real schemer desperate to improve his lot by any means, who - with his idiot friend and dogsbody - comes up with some really cunning plans.
I have my own, tiny, little germ of a worldbuilding idea outside all that, too. One that might bridge Middle-Earth and the Warhammer World, among others; at least in terms of models.
Spoiler:
The main gist and focus so far, is that there are scattered kingdoms of Tolkienesque 'wood' elves (basically saxons/normans that live under hills), largely unknown to the spreading human populations; and even fewer, less well known tribes of feral, 'chaos' elves, who consort with the few remaining beastmen of the forests. (For want of a better term) All descendants of the survivors of an ancient, almost-forgotten apocalypse. One that, a little like yours, or like the WH polar gates, left pockets of not entirely wholesome power scattered around. In recent events, both wood elves and humans alike are astounded when fleets of completely unexpected 'high' elves sail over the great ocean to the east, soon to be followed by yet more elves with a much grimmer aspect.
Humans have had their own long-past apocalyptic, population-decimating event; one that involved a plague and a hankering for brains. That allowed the wood elves one of their greatest periods of expansion and advancement since their earlier fall, but now humans are starting to recover and spread too, and are beginning to find that their old fairy stories about mysterious, capricious spirits who live in underground halls are not entirely without basis.
In the meantime the dwarfs sat, largely unconcerned, behind their fence of the great northern mountain range. Everybody knows dwarfs: they ocassionally venture south to trade or prospect. But lately, they've come south in greater and greater numbers, and don't always return home either. Humans haven't failed to notice that this has roughly coincidenced with two occurrences, and a few grumble about the dwarfs bringing these twin curses with them: the snows are falling longer, deeper and further south each year, and remaining further down the shoulders of the northern mountains, year-round; and something else, something new is sweeping down from the north-east, over the mountains - hordes of ravening creatures who kill and despoil and carry away all they come across, who seem to constantly renew their numbers no matter how many are put down. Humans had many names for them, when they had any idea at all of how to adequately describe them, but they gradually came to use the dwarfish epithet - orcs.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/02/25 14:53:22
That's awesome! If we were to ever battle, my lore might even be compatible with yours. I have been thinking about my army and doing a whole lot of painting (I even considered reviving my blog), so I should have some stuff to tell and show you guys soon, I'll update my post above when I do.
