After Age of Sigmar killed the Warhammer Fantasy universe I kind of lost my love for the warhammer fantasy setting; compounded by a significant increase in work commitments I stopped most of my hobbying. Having only recently discovered the significant and impressive work and community that now exists for The 9th Age fantasy battle i'm more invigorated and determined to get back into the hobby then ever. As part of a motivating aspect I'm looking to restart the blog focusing on varied aspects of 9th age. Assembling my Dwarven Holds, Warriors of the Dark Gods and Vampire Covenant armies.
Part of the interesting (though not entirely good) aspect of the current status quo is how much lore/fluff exists for certain armies. Given the amount of time it takes to put out the very high quality books they've done so far, there is only a trickle of information to potentially theme ones armies around. Having recently listen to an older episode of Ammertime podcast (https://soundcloud.com/ammertime-podcast), I found myself entirely in agreement with regards to a strong desire for more lore for the armies. I read somewhere on the 9th age forums that part of the process was to limit the amount of lore given to players so as not to restrict their ideology and background for their armies. Which is definitely a safer route when players will be getting models from a variety of sources now and may very much want to build to a specific theme, which if strongly discouraged in the fluff could be off-putting for people.
Secondly I used something called Coggle, which allows you to make mind maps, and although the basic online software is a bit fiddly to start, its a free software and i'm sure the paid for one does some cool things. Anyways I tried listing out the core driving mechanisms, or character defining aspects of how I envisage Dwarves, and unsurprisingly it matched up very heavily to GW's ideals.
I don't know what's going to happen when the army book for the Dwarven Holds comes out, but I'm intrigued to see if they move away from any or many of these core facets. Looking at the previous comment on how historical interactions impact on their development makes me wonder if changes to other armies might be the first indications of alterations. Obviously Dwarves aren't GW's creations but it will be interesting to see if certain aspects of their presentation need to be curbed to not be so similar as to draw IP issues. Their current Fireslayer model range in AoS seems to rely heavily on that aspect of their creation, which is unsurprising as Slayers are probably their strongest dwarf IP standpoint. I wonder if Avatar of War's "Slayer Models" i.e. Berserker's, are perhaps where the lore may end up to avoid this possible issue. Of course the Fireslayer's themselves are some kind of mix of Romanesque (with the hair tuffs), Slayers' and Infernal dwarves (I truthfully haven't looked too much into their fluff, my initial delving returned a less than appealing background), so maybe the Slayer basic persona isn't defensible from an IP point of view.
The only particularly notable piece of information which at present seems markedly different from the GW lore is the three names given for the Holds. Instead of Karak -something, there is Nevas Vanez, Nevas Derom and Nevaz Barim. Nevaz doesn't to me correlate to any language as I read it, but Ben Nevis is a mountain in Scotland (the highest in the UK, not that that's saying much), so perhaps they are leaning towards a more Scottish Dwarf (which might be very safe from an IP point). I have some Dwarf models which are quite Scottish in nature, from the Clan McFiggin Dwarf Brewers from Oathsworn Miniatures (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oathsworn/clan-mcfiggin-dwarf-brewers). Similar in style to his previous Kickstater, they have a lot of character and I can see me trying to incorporate them in some capacity to the army, especially if the lore does go Scottish.
Runes have also gone visually, at present, down a different route. The below image, courtesy of the Dwarven Holds rulebook, come from the Battle runes (a new introduction which i'll talk about in a later post). Thet have a almost Mayan/Aztec crop markings kinda feel. The linear/angular aspect of them is in essence Dwarvish but i think the very long/tall nature feels ....alien from Dwarvish writing (at least for me).
Lastly looking over the map shown at the top, it is interesting to note that as there aren't a more Easternly facing mountain as in the Old world, and thus interactions with Ogre's would likely be less, but perhaps interactions with Infernal Dwarves would be more. These sorts of changes can add to lore and stories more in the future development of the Dwarven Holds. Ultimately I'm excited to see what they come up with in the end, but as I expect it will be a long time coming (there's about 10+ army books due for release), I shall patiently move towards an army that can fit into whichever theme I think is coming.
Part of the interesting (though not entirely good) aspect of the current status quo is how much lore/fluff exists for certain armies. Given the amount of time it takes to put out the very high quality books they've done so far, there is only a trickle of information to potentially theme ones armies around. Having recently listen to an older episode of Ammertime podcast (https://soundcloud.com/ammertime-podcast), I found myself entirely in agreement with regards to a strong desire for more lore for the armies. I read somewhere on the 9th age forums that part of the process was to limit the amount of lore given to players so as not to restrict their ideology and background for their armies. Which is definitely a safer route when players will be getting models from a variety of sources now and may very much want to build to a specific theme, which if strongly discouraged in the fluff could be off-putting for people.
I started thinking about what defines the people, characters (monsters and creatures) which make up the army itself. In particular I focused on Dwarves and how much of what I envisage their characters to be was defined by GW's setting. Initially I looked at the lore on the wiki pages for dwarves relating to GW's universe, after a little bit of tweaking I ran it through a Worlde (I think) online software which highlighted in a decrease size the prominent words used in a given volume of text. I missed a few things (like edit), but a lot of what came up did highlight things which are important in the history of the Dwarves. Karak= their hold and homes, Chaos, Elves, Skaven, Greenskins all prominent. Magic and Lore and Runes and grudges all instantly noticeable as well. It's far from a perfect analysis tool but it highlights that much of the Dwarves history is shaped by it's interactions with other races.
Secondly I used something called Coggle, which allows you to make mind maps, and although the basic online software is a bit fiddly to start, its a free software and i'm sure the paid for one does some cool things. Anyways I tried listing out the core driving mechanisms, or character defining aspects of how I envisage Dwarves, and unsurprisingly it matched up very heavily to GW's ideals.
I don't know what's going to happen when the army book for the Dwarven Holds comes out, but I'm intrigued to see if they move away from any or many of these core facets. Looking at the previous comment on how historical interactions impact on their development makes me wonder if changes to other armies might be the first indications of alterations. Obviously Dwarves aren't GW's creations but it will be interesting to see if certain aspects of their presentation need to be curbed to not be so similar as to draw IP issues. Their current Fireslayer model range in AoS seems to rely heavily on that aspect of their creation, which is unsurprising as Slayers are probably their strongest dwarf IP standpoint. I wonder if Avatar of War's "Slayer Models" i.e. Berserker's, are perhaps where the lore may end up to avoid this possible issue. Of course the Fireslayer's themselves are some kind of mix of Romanesque (with the hair tuffs), Slayers' and Infernal dwarves (I truthfully haven't looked too much into their fluff, my initial delving returned a less than appealing background), so maybe the Slayer basic persona isn't defensible from an IP point of view.
The only particularly notable piece of information which at present seems markedly different from the GW lore is the three names given for the Holds. Instead of Karak -something, there is Nevas Vanez, Nevas Derom and Nevaz Barim. Nevaz doesn't to me correlate to any language as I read it, but Ben Nevis is a mountain in Scotland (the highest in the UK, not that that's saying much), so perhaps they are leaning towards a more Scottish Dwarf (which might be very safe from an IP point). I have some Dwarf models which are quite Scottish in nature, from the Clan McFiggin Dwarf Brewers from Oathsworn Miniatures (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oathsworn/clan-mcfiggin-dwarf-brewers). Similar in style to his previous Kickstater, they have a lot of character and I can see me trying to incorporate them in some capacity to the army, especially if the lore does go Scottish.
Runes have also gone visually, at present, down a different route. The below image, courtesy of the Dwarven Holds rulebook, come from the Battle runes (a new introduction which i'll talk about in a later post). Thet have a almost Mayan/Aztec crop markings kinda feel. The linear/angular aspect of them is in essence Dwarvish but i think the very long/tall nature feels ....alien from Dwarvish writing (at least for me).
Lastly looking over the map shown at the top, it is interesting to note that as there aren't a more Easternly facing mountain as in the Old world, and thus interactions with Ogre's would likely be less, but perhaps interactions with Infernal Dwarves would be more. These sorts of changes can add to lore and stories more in the future development of the Dwarven Holds. Ultimately I'm excited to see what they come up with in the end, but as I expect it will be a long time coming (there's about 10+ army books due for release), I shall patiently move towards an army that can fit into whichever theme I think is coming.
