Chameleon-men

Our big discovery of the holidays was Daniel Mersey's The Men Who Would Be Kings. It's similar to the same author's Lion Rampant and Dragon Rampant games, but it also differs in some interesting ways that go beyond period flavour. The rules are designed for nineteenth-century colonial warfare, but we played them using red-armoured sci-fi orcs as colonialists and pallid fantasy orcs as 'natives'. 

Those games went well enough, and the colonial orcs have since been equipped with a field gun. But I thought we could do with some more interesting tribal types for the high-tech orcs to fight. 

'Tribals' in The Men Who Would Be Kings are typically fielded in units of 16, and a normal force might conceivably have eight such units. So the numbers point to recruitment from the ranks of the owned but unpainted rather than new purchases. Looming largest in those ranks are various reptile and amphibian humanoids. I have quite a lot of the old Citadel Slann - perhaps enough for three or four units - and lots of lizardmen of various sorts.

Among those are these chameleon men, which I bought second hand a couple of years ago. They're from an out-of-production boxed wargame called Carnage, and came with some lizard-mounted cavalry (whose amphibian riders might work as Slann) and some crocodilian swordsmen. I think there are about eight of each infantry type and ten of the cavalry. The Men Who Would Be Kings has an option for playing half-size units ('Skirmish Kings'), so the two sorts of infantry would give me either a combined unit of 16 or two cut-down groups for the abbreviated version. Or they could just mix in with the many heterogenous reptilians I've amassed over the years: reptilian auxiliaries of the amphibious Slann.

I painted the first couple up very quickly last night. They're undercoated in black gesso, painted Vallejo silver-grey all over, then drybrushed white. All the rest is Citadel contrast paint, followed by some black lining and highlights only on the eyes, teeth and horns. If the rest prove as quick, I shoudl have that first unit of tribals done very shortly.

The qhal and the Slann. Or: did CJ Cherryh invent the Old World?

The qual?

The other day, I was in an second-hand bookshop and picked up Gate of Ivrel, a novel by CJ Cherryh, published in 1977. I've read nothing by her, but have heard a fair bit of praise of her work. So I bought it. It appears to be a sort of science-fantasy: a medieval setting with an sf backstory.

On opening it, I was struck by familiar elements in the prologue:

The gates were the ruin of the qhal. They were everywhere, on every world, had been a fact of life for millennia, and had linked the whole net of qhal civilisation - an empire of both Space and Time, for the Gates led into elsewhen as well as elsewhere ... except at the end.

It continues, later on the same page:

So the qhal migrated through future time, gathering in greater and greater numbers in the most distant ages. They migrated in space too, and thrust themselves insolently into the affairs of other beings, ripping loose a segment of their time also. ... They simply used the lesser races as they were useful, and seeded the worlds they colonized with the gatherings of whatever compatible worlds they pleased. ... The qhal in the end had little need left, and little ambition but for luxury and novelty and the consuming lust for other, ever-farther Gates.

Until someone, somewhen, backtimed and tampered - perhaps ever so minutely. 

The whole of reality warped and shredded. 

Ring any bells?  Here's second-edition Warhammer on the Slann:

The Slann are a unique race in the Known World. Their origins are uncertain, but they appear to be descended from the ancient race of Old Slann. The Old Slann possessed a civilisation far beyond anything we have even today. Science and philosophy were as one to them, they were the lords of time and space. There was nowhere they could not go and nothing they could not do, it is said that the High Age of the Slann was a golden era for all sentient creatures. It is probably that the Old Slann came from the stars, as Slann legend recalls. The Slann of today are a race fallen from power, they have turned their backs on the past and have grown to hate and fear the old technology. What brought about the decline of the Slann is not known. However, Slann legend connects the fall of the Old Slann with galactic catastrophy and the creation of theIncursions of Chaos. 

[Emphasis mine]

Then, in the third edition, we get this (p. 231, under Slann):

The Slann are an ancient race whose past and origin stretches beyond the horizons of this world. Once they roamed the stuff of Chaos, moving between planets in their marvellous silver spaceships, seeding the universe with their genetic experiments.

 Earlier (p.189), there's this:

One of their greatest achievements was the creation of spacial gateways between worlds, facilitating rapid travel over vast distances of space. Spatial gateways, or warp-gates, were constructed near habitable planets, looking very much like huge black holes over the firmament. ... On many worlds the Slann discovered living creatures. Some of these creatures became the subjects of genetic experiments. Newly created worlds became home to the offspring of these engineered creatures. Other worlds were found to have evolved life-forms which were dangerous and displeasing, creatures which were subsequently destroyed or altered to make them more useful. By this means the Slann created many of the galaxy's habitable worlds and seeded the galaxy with the ancestors of men and other humanoid creatures. 

But as with the qhal, it all goes wrong:

The mechanism controlling the warp-gates failed, the polar gates collapsed and the world was cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

All of this (and there's lots more of it) reads very much like an expansion of Cherryh's concept of the qhal and their gates. Note that in second-edition Warhammer, the Slann were more qhal-like in that they were lords of time and space. By the third edition, however, their domain was spatial rather than temporal.

Now, there's nothing in the slightest bit wrong with this homage. Genius steals and all that. But I was surprised to find that I can't get a single Google result for "qhal" and "Slann". I can't be the first person to have noticed this, can I?

It's odd because the Warhammer creators have been very open about their influences: Moorcock, Tolkien, Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Frazetta, Pape, etc. I'm speculating, but could the Cherryh influence have come via Richard Halliwell, who has apparently been in poor health and hasn't been interviewed about Warhammer's origins in the way that Bryan Ansell and Rick Priestly have? According to Zhu Bajiee (sic: not Zhu Baijie, or Pigsy, as many of us remember him from Monkey), Halliwell was the creator of the Slann. So maybe that's it.

Or could this be a case of parallel evolution? I don't think so, given the similarity of the concepts (lords of time and space, gates, interference with other species, catastrophe when the gates fail).

I reckon the Slann are one of the best of the Warhammer creations, but they've been sadly underserved by Games Workshop since their second-edition heyday. So I'm pleased to have discovered this indication of their origins. It gives me a little more impetus to accelerate my Slann-painting efforts into the end of the year!

Out of the toybox ...

A project that my children and I have been planning for a while is to repurpose some of their old toys for gaming. This ceratosaur is the first fruit of that endeavour.

My son has had it since he was two or three; I think my wife bought it in a batch of second-hand dinosaurs in a charity shop. It's by no means a high-end toy (like those made by Schleich or Papo), and it came with a flat, blotchy orange factory paint job. But it's quite a nicely posed beastie, and it's the perfect size for a Hordes of the Things behemoth element. It fills the 60mm frontage nicely, with enough height to clear a typical infantry or cavalry element to its front. And because it fills the base nicely, it'll work well for RPGs and skirmish games too.

The ceratosaur's first role, however, will be as behemoth element in a HotT slann army. I have quite a few of Citadel's slann miniatures, some acquired when I was a child and a few more - especially cold-one riders - accumulated since. 

My plan for the slann is to base the slotta-based ones individually and the solid-based ones, which are  a little smaller, on HotT element bases. The palace guards and armoured warriors will form blade or spear elements. The tribal warriors, who have blowpipes and throwing axes, could be shooters or warbands - and might also see service as lurkers, water lurkers or even sneakers. Cold-one riders could be beasts, riders or knights. And then I'll add dragon-man flyers, a magician on a palanquin and probably some more dinosaur behemoths.