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Like a lot of 40k, the Necromunda houses look a little exaggerated and cartoonish, perhaps none more than House Escher, the all woman house that hates the mens. But also like a lot of things in 40k, when you really examine it in detail there's more nuance and depth here than there first appears to be...

I was wary of this due to the somewhat clickbaity title, but the video itself is good fun. Made me smile.

If I have one criticism, it's that I couldn't quite tell from the tone whether you were aware of the intentional, satirical aspects of the Escher background. You bring up a lot of 70s and 80s way-out feminist fringe thought (I'm referring to Solanas and the other 'kill all men' stuff here), but there seem to be only two possibilities that you consider:

a) the Escher are a political statement promoting misandry and the rule of women (and thus highly flammable on the internet)

b) the Escher are a science-fictional thought experiment about an unusual social situation (and thus only moderately flammable on the internet).

I may have missed it because I watched the video at midnight, but it seems to me that you missed possibility C: the Escher are a satire on radical feminism. At least in their original 90s incarnation. The current N17 fluff is probably an attempt to work backwards from that to give them a credible backstory.

I find this omission odd because to me it's by far the most obvious and likely of the three. Especially given that the writers were all men, and thus presumably not inclined to seriously promote option A. And particularly because everything in Warhammer was originally intended as satire, if not outright parody.



I also notice (OK, two criticisms) that you didn't say much about the Amazon archetype, which is the bedrock for much of the Escher background. Not just 'women who rule men', i.e. matriarchy, but women who live apart from men, who have as little to do with men as possible other than what's necessary for reproduction, and who have to be excellent fighters in order to stop all the men in all the surrounding countries doing the usual 'hey, free wives and bed slaves!' thing that men throughout history do. You do hit on that last point when talking about the Escher deliberately cultivating a reputation for cruelty.

(Incidentally, one way for women to fight on equal terms with men in a pre-industrial society is horseback archery. It's the ancient equivalent of the gun as equaliser. Don't think it's a coincidence that the legends of the Amazons sprang up around the lands of the Sarmatians and other horse-based cultures.)

It's as much a male fantasy as it is a radical feminist one. Partly a sexual one, yes... but also a fearful fantasy of "what if our positions were reversed?" IIRC the chauvinistic ancient Greeks thought of women-in-charge as a fascinating nightmare of the world gone wrong or turned upside down, much like slaves making the laws or the the dead coming back to life. It gives voice to a deep-seated (and maybe concrete and biological) fear that men aren't just expendable but redundant. If women died out, humans would go extinct, but if men died out--or if women decided to get rid of them--the species could feasibly continue. It wouldn't be easy, but it could be done. Happens naturally via evolution all the time when some lizard species or other starts self-fertilising for whatever reason. (And then that lizard goes extinct a few million years later due to the Red Queen, but those were a few million years of amazonian bliss, gosh darnit.)



The other bit of historical inspiration I was hoping you'd touch on (yeah, yeah, I know, three criticisms, it's all gone Spanish Inquisition in here): the precursors to the Escher in Games Workshop material itself. I don't know if it's ever been outright stated officially, but I reckon the Escher are recycled concepts from early Warhammer Fantasy. Way back in 1st edition WFB, we had the Amazons. They had punk hairstyles, reproduced without the aid of men, and generally parodied the British feminism of the time... and wielded bolt pistols and power weapons. Yep, in Fantasy. It was a lot more gonzo and sci-fi back then. Frogs from space and all. See this artwork for instance:


The Amazons' homeland, Lustria, was the first-ever properly fleshed-out setting in Warhammer Fantasy. Even before the Old World. But the focus shifted across the sea soon afterward, their creator (Richard Halliwell) moved on from GW, and by the time Lustria came back (in 5th edition in the 90s), the Amazons had receded into the shadows and never really showed up again. One of the few tentative attempts to update them was made in 6th edition WFB by none other than Andy Hoare. I don't think it's a coincidence that the current N17 Escher have kinda jungle-tribal trappings.

I'm pretty sure that Jes Goodwin and rest of the 90s team repurposed the old gun-wielding Amazon designs for Necromunda, where to be honest they fit in much better.

What I'm saying, basically, is Escher are the most fundamentally Warhammery thing it is possible to be. Even more so than Chaos. They're like the Tom Bombadil of Warhammer. First and oldest.


A few other random thoughts:

- I'd never thought about how the Escher see the Emperor. Innnteresting. I agree they probably see him as exceptional and different, in much the way that historically male-dominated cultures have seen female rulers as 'transcending' the limitations of their sex. I recently read a fascinating 80s book about this (though how it's regarded these days I'm not sure)--The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser. Worth checking out.

- If the Eschers' DNA damage is sex-linked, it's presumably on the X chromosome, which is why it's usually males who are affected. Women have a backup.

- Escher women are presumably 'gay for the stay' much like women in prison, except for them it's their whole life. (Edit: Another comparison could be to cultures with pervasive sex segregation, where men hang out mostly with other men and women with other women, and can't be seen in public together. Men, at least, in such cultures often appear bisexual because they just don't have much opportunity to get it on with the other sex. Women seem better able to just switch it off altogether, or at least keep it very quiet due to social pressure, but House Escher is an unusual case and the latter at least wouldn't apply.)

- In case you're not already aware, in Adeptus Titanicus, there's now officially a Titan Legion (Solaria aka the Imperial Hunters) who are pretty much 30K Escher equivalents with giant robots. The Amazon conquest of the galaxy continues.

Zenithfleet wrote:
I was wary of this due to the somewhat clickbaity title, but the video itself is good fun. Made me smile.

If I have one criticism, it's that I couldn't quite tell from the tone whether you were aware of the intentional, satirical aspects of the Escher background. You bring up a lot of 70s and 80s way-out feminist fringe thought (I'm referring to Solanas and the other 'kill all men' stuff here), but there seem to be only two possibilities that you consider:

a) the Escher are a political statement promoting misandry and the rule of women (and thus highly flammable on the internet)

b) the Escher are a science-fictional thought experiment about an unusual social situation (and thus only moderately flammable on the internet).

I may have missed it because I watched the video at midnight, but it seems to me that you missed possibility C: the Escher are a satire on radical feminism. At least in their original 90s incarnation. The current N17 fluff is probably an attempt to work backwards from that to give them a credible backstory.

I find this omission odd because to me it's by far the most obvious and likely of the three. Especially given that the writers were all men, and thus presumably not inclined to seriously promote option A. And particularly because everything in Warhammer was originally intended as satire, if not outright parody.



I also notice (OK, two criticisms) that you didn't say much about the Amazon archetype, which is the bedrock for much of the Escher background. Not just 'women who rule men', i.e. matriarchy, but women who live apart from men, who have as little to do with men as possible other than what's necessary for reproduction, and who have to be excellent fighters in order to stop all the men in all the surrounding countries doing the usual 'hey, free wives and bed slaves!' thing that men throughout history do. You do hit on that last point when talking about the Escher deliberately cultivating a reputation for cruelty.

(Incidentally, one way for women to fight on equal terms with men in a pre-industrial society is horseback archery. It's the ancient equivalent of the gun as equaliser. Don't think it's a coincidence that the legends of the Amazons sprang up around the lands of the Sarmatians and other horse-based cultures.)

It's as much a male fantasy as it is a radical feminist one. Partly a sexual one, yes... but also a fearful fantasy of "what if our positions were reversed?" IIRC the chauvinistic ancient Greeks thought of women-in-charge as a fascinating nightmare of the world gone wrong or turned upside down, much like slaves making the laws or the the dead coming back to life. It gives voice to a deep-seated (and maybe concrete and biological) fear that men aren't just expendable but redundant. If women died out, humans would go extinct, but if men died out--or if women decided to get rid of them--the species could feasibly continue. It wouldn't be easy, but it could be done. Happens naturally via evolution all the time when some lizard species or other starts self-fertilising for whatever reason. (And then that lizard goes extinct a few million years later due to the Red Queen, but those were a few million years of amazonian bliss, gosh darnit.)



The other bit of historical inspiration I was hoping you'd touch on (yeah, yeah, I know, three criticisms, it's all gone Spanish Inquisition in here): the precursors to the Escher in Games Workshop material itself. I don't know if it's ever been outright stated officially, but I reckon the Escher are recycled concepts from early Warhammer Fantasy. Way back in 1st edition WFB, we had the Amazons. They had punk hairstyles, reproduced without the aid of men, and generally parodied the British feminism of the time... and wielded bolt pistols and power weapons. Yep, in Fantasy. It was a lot more gonzo and sci-fi back then. Frogs from space and all. See this artwork for instance:

Spoiler:

The Amazons' homeland, Lustria, was the first-ever properly fleshed-out setting in Warhammer Fantasy. Even before the Old World. But the focus shifted across the sea soon afterward, their creator (Richard Halliwell) moved on from GW, and by the time Lustria came back (in 5th edition in the 90s), the Amazons had receded into the shadows and never really showed up again. One of the few tentative attempts to update them was made in 6th edition WFB by none other than Andy Hoare. I don't think it's a coincidence that the current N17 Escher have kinda jungle-tribal trappings.

I'm pretty sure that Jes Goodwin and rest of the 90s team repurposed the old gun-wielding Amazon designs for Necromunda, where to be honest they fit in much better.

What I'm saying, basically, is Escher are the most fundamentally Warhammery thing it is possible to be. Even more so than Chaos. They're like the Tom Bombadil of Warhammer. First and oldest.


A few other random thoughts:

- I'd never thought about how the Escher see the Emperor. Innnteresting. I agree they probably see him as exceptional and different, in much the way that historically male-dominated cultures have seen female rulers as 'transcending' the limitations of their sex. I recently read a fascinating 80s book about this (though how it's regarded these days I'm not sure)--The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser. Worth checking out.

- If the Eschers' DNA damage is sex-linked, it's presumably on the X chromosome, which is why it's usually males who are affected. Women have a backup.

- Escher women are presumably 'gay for the stay' much like women in prison, except for them it's their whole life. (Edit: Another comparison could be to cultures with pervasive sex segregation, where men hang out mostly with other men and women with other women, and can't be seen in public together. Men, at least, in such cultures often appear bisexual because they just don't have much opportunity to get it on with the other sex. Women seem better able to just switch it off altogether, or at least keep it very quiet due to social pressure, but House Escher is an unusual case and the latter at least wouldn't apply.)

- In case you're not already aware, in Adeptus Titanicus, there's now officially a Titan Legion (Solaria aka the Imperial Hunters) who are pretty much 30K Escher equivalents with giant robots. The Amazon conquest of the galaxy continues.

Glad you liked it overall! Lots of stuff to respond to here. I'll try to be brief.

I do allude a little to House Escher being a satirical rather than a serious take on radical feminism (the joke about Phyrr Cats, referring to it as a subversion and deconstruction, that it was written by men I mention specifically) but I don't really make that clear, which I probably could have stood to do. The main focus of the video was more on "could the actual fluff for this society be interpreted realistically" than "what was the original intention behind this fluff." So while I do go into the inspiration a little, it wasn't intended to be the main focus and whether it's satirical or not doesn't really matter for the main focus of the video, which I think is where your confusion comes in. But I should have addressed the satire angle more explicitly. Of course "originally satirical but fleshed out to have more depth and realism" describes most of 40k's fluff.

As for historical Amazons, again I glossed over that aspect, but that's because I didn't feel like I had much interesting to say about it. Your comments here were interesting additions for me. I'm far more of a 40k player and hobbyist than a fantasy one, so I know a lot more about 1st edition 40k (Rogue Trader) than 1st edition fantasy. This is actually the first time I've heard of Amazons in 1st ed fantasy. I was only really familiar with them from their later return and their time as a Mordheim warband.

I was also thinking of making a white girl cultural appropriation joke, since House Escher having a native american theme kinda makes it look like they're cribbing fashion from the Ratskins, who are much more explicitly native american. It is nice to know the true origins of that aesthetic. Of course, in universe they very well COULD be cribbing fashion ideas from the Ratskins. That's the thing about fluff. There's always the in and out of universe explanations.

I agree that House Escher fits much better where it is now, in Necromunda. I'd kinda like to see more done with Necromunda's Guard regiments too, but I don't know if that will ever happen.

The X chromosome thing isn't explicitly stated but is the obvious reason, just like many real world genetic defects that either only effect men or effect men at much higher rates than women. It's just never been so extreme in the real world.

As for the "gay for stay" thing, that's what I was getting at by mentioning there would probably be more same sex relationships due to there being no other options. But obviously that would not work for all women. Just like plenty of men who go to prison don't go prison gay, at least not willingly (but good grief, let's not get into THAT subject). And men do have a significantly more powerful sex drive due to testosterone having a powerful effect on sex drive, as male transgenders who have gone on T have attested. So women cope with lifelong celibacy better I think, but that doesn't mean it can't often be a source of stress and feelings of loneliness. Humans aren't evolutionarily designed for celibacy, after all.

Thanks for the info on Solaria, that's another fluff tidbit I didn't know about.

Oops, life happened and I forgot to come back to this thread...

Glad that you found some of what I said worthwhile. I tend to go on a bit of a rant when I post after midnight. It's a Mogwai thing.

For info on the 1st ed WFB Amazons and Lustria, the Lost Warhammer blog is worth checking out. (Though I notice the author doesn't seem aware of the real-world legends about Amazons existing in South America--California and the Amazon River both deriving their names from those stories.)

 fallinq wrote:

Thanks for the info on Solaria, that's another fluff tidbit I didn't know about.

I just finished reading Guy Haley's Horus Heresy novel Titandeath, which features the Legio Solaria. Not the greatest novel in the world (unsurprisingly as it was written at warp speed), but it does include a fair bit of fluff for them. Sadly it's implied they lose their distinctive Amazonianity after the Heresy and become a more typically male-dominated Legion.

(Also, Haley somehow makes an entire army of lesbian polyamorous tech-worshipping giant-robot pilots in Christmas-themed livery as dull as dishwater. )

I didn't want to get drawn on the whole transgender thing as that opens a can of milliasaurs, but...

 fallinq wrote:

And men do have a significantly more powerful sex drive due to testosterone having a powerful effect on sex drive, as male transgenders who have gone on T have attested. So women cope with lifelong celibacy better I think, but that doesn't mean it can't often be a source of stress and feelings of loneliness. Humans aren't evolutionarily designed for celibacy, after all.

... I do have one quibble about the example of FTM transgender folks (by 'male transgenders' I'm guessing you mean trans men, i.e. biological females who transition to living as men?): I'm cautious about extrapolating from their experience to that of biological males vs biological females in general.

IIRC, although men have more testosterone in their system, women are much more sensitive to changes in their level of testosterone. In fact, being 'masculinised' in utero may actually desensitise the brain against the effects of testosterone--so that the rest of the body can be drenched in T to get the needed physical changes in body shape without altering the brain too much.

So although taking testosterone may boost a bio-female's sex drive to X-rated levels, that doesn't necessarily mean that bio-males feel that way all the time. She (he in the case of a trans guy) may be responding to it much more powerfully than the typical male would to a comparable level of T.

I can't remember where I read this, though. Some pop science book or other. Citation needed.

Anyway, I'm not convinced by the whole 'men have a stronger sex drive than women' thing, at least not in straightforward terms like that. More like... the male sex drive is less cautious, more constant over the medium and long term, and less willing to compromise according to social expectations. Basically I'd say men's sex drive has a permanent force field of Idontcarewhatyouthink around it. Women's seems more amenable to being put on a shelf for a while because life isn't cooperating, or suddenly switching off because Danger Will Robinson, or keeping the volume turned down because otherwise Trouble Will Ensue. Which is only sensible when you're a) the one who can get pregnant and b) you have to deal with men.

But hey, there's evidence for your position too. I dunno. Is complicated.

...Is this a suitable topic for Dakka? I genuinely have no idea.