Marauder MM41 Ogre (1990)

The Marauder Ogres, sculpted by Aly Morrison in 1989/1990, are my second favourite Ogres after those made by Jes Goodwin. The interesting thing about them is that they are all dressed in fancy Landksnecht attire, and look like they have been equipped by a generous Imperial patron.

I've painted this one in deep blue and red, the colours of House Bramanti, the princely dynasty ruling over the city of Dralas in the Border Princedoms. It will be used as an Ogre bodyguard to Prince Aldo or his sister, Donna Caterina.

"Out o' the way, ye scum! Here comes the Madonna!"

The Bramanti are not an old dynasty, but they are a successful one. They have thrived by keeping a low profile and managing to unite the many factions of Dralas without threatening any. At the same time, they made sure to defend themselves and keep enemies at bay in many ways. The Bramanti are schemers, and highly respected by merchants for being moderates.

"Go where you know, and take care of the problem for me"

 "Yarp!"

Undinel, Herald of Serpentsfang - Foundry Sea Elf Command

Since last Summer I have been experimenting with colour schemes for a Sea Elf force. Here's one of them - the light blue and sea green of clan Serpentsfang.

This figure is from the Wargames Foundry Sea Elf Command blister, a line with many flaws (strange proportions, missing weapons, weird body positions) but also great detail (I love their mariner boots and scale armour). Too bad they were discontinued, but if you are at the shop you might be able to get a few at half price.

This specific figure came without a weapon - i would have loved to find a trident but in the end settled for a spear, which I had among my bits. It is a female figure in armour, with a closed helm sporting a serpent crest and a harp decorated with wave motifs.

One of my housefluff Sea Elf Houses is called Serpentsfang: they are based in Dralas, in the Border Princes, and they are merchants and healers. Their device is a Serpent's Fang dripping poison, a reference to the foundation myth of Dralas - the slaying of the Sea Serpent - and a reference to the killing and healing powers of venom. 

I decided this character is wearing a ritual armour representing the whole clan in city festivals. The harp is a heirloom of the clan, the Harp of the Waves, able to conjure or banish sea turbulence. Undinel is one of the daughters of Magalhaes, the clan Head, and is also her father's herald, representing him in missions away from the city and the Community.

Bretonnian Infantry Command, painted as Standard Bearer of Dralas

I got this nice little miniature on eBay. Could not recognize the code, and didn't record the year before basing it. I just know it's Bretonnian and it comes from a command group. It could easily be Perry-sculpted, as far as I know.

I bought him together with a bunch of other Bretonnian infantrymen, with the idea of creating a group of guards to use in WFRP games. I toyed with the project of painting them all with the colours of Dralas, the homebrew city in the Border Princes where most of my scenarios start. After a long time, only this guy has been painted, and the other will most likely follow in another livery, that of Artesia, the bordering princedoms that usually poses as the villain of the campaign.

Dralas is a port city and its colours are white and blue, like the sea and the foam over the waves. The city sits at the mouth of the river Zaffirio, so sapphire is the stone associated with the city heraldry. The other association is the Sea Serpent: according to legend, Dralas was originally founded by Elves and abandoned in the distant past, then a Sea Serpent set its abode under the murky waters of the ruined elven harbour, until the hero Dalphis slew the reptile and reclaimed the ruins, becoming the founder of the city.

Dalphis lived some 15 centuries ago and since then Dralas has seen many events: the city was a capital and then a subject, it had kings, princes and councils of citizens. Until recently it was ruled by a prince, until he was forced by an elven adventurer and pirate to surrender power and the hand of his sister. Nowadays it is the Regent Gelmir Lindarian who controls the government. This, however, does hardly mean that he holds power: Dralas is a famously seedy port where a lot of deals are made under locked doors, and the real power rarely resides where it appears to be.

The Regent directly controls the Black Guard, a group 30 of mercenaries who helped him conquer the city, commanded by general Achille. The Palace Guard's loyalty is divided between the Regent and the Prince: they are about 30 well trained warriors. The City Guard (90 members) follows the orders of the Regent as long as it gets paid regularly. The City Militia, being the largest force in town (450 members), obeys its Captains, who in turn are nominated among nobles, and so they follow their own interests and are generally raised only in case of foreign invasions.

This guy probably belongs to the City Guard and is therefore the most flexible. He could be used to police the streets, guard locations or escort important people in town. He wears a padded leather jacket and a helm, and is armed with a sword (so he is probably an official) and carries a standard with the city device.

Sea Elves - Marauder High Elves MM81 (1989)

Once upon a time, there were the four Elven Races.

At first they were all, in a way, similar to each other, yet each followed a different path and each became unique.

The High Elves then garbed in long, flowing robes and tall helms.

The Wood Elves hid themselves in wide cloaks with hoods.

The Dark Elves covered themselves with spiky pieces of armour and cruel trophies from their ritual killings.

The Sea Elves disappeared. They were retconned with the coming of the age of Kirby.

And so their memory was fixed. Everybody remembered them when they were young, and they wore different kinds of clothes, not unlike those worn by Men, yet different. There wasn’t one like another, just like Humans, and perhaps this was so because of their proximity to Men, from whom they drew a vitality unusual for Elves, something certainly chaotic, but also beautiful.

If you follow this blog, you know I have a thing for Sea Elves. And, in my imagination, no better miniatures represent them than the Marauder Elves. No matter how they were originally categorized: today, to me, they are all Sea Elves, because all other Elves have developed a different identity, with time.

I remember in 1997 looking at the WFRP 1st ed., in its Italian translation - Martelli da Guerra - and seeing this excellent picture by Paul Bonner, close to the section about the elven races, and thought: surely these must be them.

This image apparently doesn't exist on the internet, so I had to take a picture of it with my mobile.

High Elf on horseback, Wood Elf with the bow, Dark Elf with two swords, black make up and a tomahawk (Wardancers were still unheard of in our gaming group). So the central one, with a hood and the badass look on his face, must be the Sea Elf. It probably was not, but who cares to be corrected after 20 years? 

Elven minstrel, from WFRP 1st ed.

Elf, from WFRP 1st ed.

Elf in a Sea Elf community in the Old World, WFRP 1st ed.

My image of Sea Elves was formed on pictures from that period, where Elves were not yet so remote as they became in later years, and were similar to Men. Just like there were Mountain Dwarfs with helms and chain mails, and Imperial Dwarfs dressed more or less like Imperial citizens, so - I reasoned - Elves living near Mannish communities must also wear clothes that go with the fashion. It made sense. It still does, since nothing on the subject has ever been published by GW after the early 90s. And so when I saw these Marauder High Elves (MM81) on eBay, I just had to have them. Look at them. Just look at them! 

 

Marauder High Elf MM81/2 from 1989, sculpted by Trish Morrison. An apparently simple sculpt with actually a lot of detail in embroidery and studs. I love the chainmail over leather jacket, the conical helm and the handaxe, which can be a tool as well as a weapon. Sea Elves are, after all, craftsmen and merchants.

Marauder High Elf MM81/6 from 1989, again sculpted by Trish Morrison. This one is less harmonious and dynamic, but again its apparent simplicity reveals, when painted, a lot of embroidery and studs, which I choose to paint in lighter greys and whites as if they were pearls. This is obviously a prominent Elf, with a short sword, pieces of plate armour and a long overcoat, which I painted in double colours - sky blue outside and emerald green inside, nicely contrasting the purple tights. I'll use it for one of the NPCs of my WFRP campaign: Magalhaes, the leader of the Sea Elf community of Dralas. An old (220+) Elf, always moderate and diplomatic, carefully supporting the Regent Gelmir without getting too committed to him. Keeping a foot in every shoe and a finger in every pie, just not deep enough to get burned. Quietly outweathering the events of history in the Old World and outliving all his enemies, just sitting on the banks of the river.

  

Marauder High Elf MM81/5 from 1989, like most other Elves from Marauder done by Trish Morrison. This tall, thin one is a fop, with his slashed sleeves and tall boots. There are studs/pearls on his botts and on the jacket, and on his crested helm. He wields a handaxe and I'll get a buckler for the other hand. In my campaign it represents Sidonaer, a Sea Elf rogue/adventurer who meddled too much with Men and took a number of wrong turns, so that now his family shuns him and he is wanted by several criminals for alleged wrongs he once did. A few weeks ago things went wrong again when the PCs in my group attempted to steal his treasure, which he collected in an expedition to Lustria, and ended up wounding him badly and killing his partners in business. Now Sidonaer is tending an ugly cut on his head and planning his revenge on the party.

These three are but a few of the figs I managed to acquire. I'll be posting more in the weeks to come and, ideally, I'll be assembling a warband to be used in Mordheim.

Brandir the Adventurer - Citadel Elf Warrior (1987)

Some NPCs are so good they eventually become PCs. This is the story of one of them, Brandir.

Brandir's story begins with that of his older brother Gelmir. The two are born, together with a third sister, from a poor Sea Elf family living in the miserable village of Grilm, on the coast of the Wasteland. Father dies at sea when the children are young. Mother is slain by Greenskins during a raid, while the kids hide under the bed. The three survive by begging and stealing.
 

Then, at some point Brandir's story takes a different turn, a grimmer one than his siblings who will eventually get saved and adopted. Little Brandir, while in the gutters of Zeaburg, is lured with an apple by a smiling man and invited into a private house. He gets a hit on the head and drops unconscious. He is taken away. The man is a thief and smuggler, and he also, in his own way, adopts Brandir, but he is far less kind than Elmerin. Brandir learns to steal and stab and trick and becomes, willing or not, part of Johann the Lame's band of footpads and cutthroats. They spend most of their time in Marienburg but travel the Wasteland when times are hard and the guards are on their trail.

Years pass, and eventually Johann the Lame gets old. Brandir has little love for him and, at the first good chance, he takes over the band and offers the old man a kind choice between retiring to a dilapidated country hut with little to no pension, but alive, or retire at the bottom of a canal of the Kruiersmuur, with no need of any pension. Johann makes the wise choise.

A few members of the band, the old ones, leave, but new ones join and soon Brandir's band increases its business substantially. The Elf is young and less cautious than Johann, taking risks that offer high returns. He seems blessed by Ranald, and his reputation grows, until one day he is introduced to an ascending merchant, going by the name of Johann Hess.

In order to make his family rich, Hess has his fingers in many pies, including illegal ones. Smuggling is one of them and, with his activities growing, he needs to outsource the extra job to smart people. Soon Brandir starts making a lot of money, especially with those new shipments of closed crates coming from Norsca. All marked with a red X and solidly nailed so no one can spy their contents.

It is when some members of his band start displaying strange signs of mutation that Brandir decides to do what he has been explicitly asked not to do: open one of the crates. It is full of shards of black, iridescent stone.

That is his last delivery. He goes to see Hess and tells him he's not feeling well and wants to leave the business for some time. But Hess guesses Brandir knows more than he says. The same night, coming back at his band's den, Brandir finds assassins. He barely escapes with a few men, but loses all his savings. At dawn he silently navigates the marshes on a rowboat, headed at Lame Johann's hut. It's empty, the old man must have died years ago.

Enraged at Hess's betrayal Brandir plans revenge, but he decides to wait - too many people are looking for him in Marienburg. He spends some time in the town of Bokel, across the frontier of Nordland, but he soon finds out the Warpstone has tainted him: he has started losing all the hair on his body.

It is several months after his flight that Brandir returns to Marienburg. By now he has become completely glabrous, even losing his eyelashes. He wears a hood over his head or, sometimes, a wig. He calls himself Gelmir, the name of his lost brother. Working isn't easy when nobody knows you and, desperate for money, Brandir enters a gambling house planning to get something to start again. But the games are rigged, and the house belongs to Hess. Soon he has an outstanding debt, and Hess's thugs are on his trail once again.

With two companions he boards a ship bound for Erengrad, where he hides for a while. It is here that his brother finds him: hunted by Hess, the real Gelmir find the impostor, recognizing him as his long lost, and now mutant, brother. Together, they vow revenge on Hess and on his network of warpstone smuggling, funded by the Skaven. And so it begins Brandir's life as a PC.

 

The miniature I choose for Brandir is no. 9 in 1988 Citadel Catalogue, Elf Warrior Category. It is marked as "Elf" and dated 1987, so it probably debuted on an earlier White Dwarf, The line is designed by Jes Goodwin and Aly Morrison: it's not clear who sculpted this particular figure but my guess is Jes Goodwin.

There are lots of things to like in this sculpt. The simplicity first of all. Lots of empty areas to freely paint. Then the shady look - there is something thievish with this hooded Elf, shield raised and sword reared, leather jacket, bag across the shoulder and a rope hanging from the side.

Missing the original shield, I recycled a 15mm Medieval shield which looks enough like a buckler, where I painted the device of Liria, a free city of sea merchants on the eastern borders of Tilea.

Comments? Did you also happen to turn NPCs into PCs? Leave some feedback below!

Celebril Sirdaryan, High Elven Diplomat - GW Lothern Sea Guard Champion (1999)

This miniature dates from 1999-2001, freshly bought in a blister at the Games Workshop shop in Milan. We are talking at the Lothern Sea Guard Champion issued in 1999: no idea about the sculptor, unfortunately: if you know, leave me a comment.

The figure is good. Sadly, while still painting it it fell to the ground, resulting in the sword losing its tip. Still, I was quite proud of it, when I painted it as Celebril Sirdaryan, one of the NPCs of my WFRP campaign.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much technique at the time and, looking at it today, I find it appalling. That's why I decided to repaint it a few months ago. What was wrong with it? For a start, it's too white: it was primed white and painted with a single white layer, then washed in black. It's plain, dull and dirty. The base is too simple, making he figure look even flatter.

A few words about Celebril. He's an interesting NPC, with a potential to become a PC. Born in the outer realm of Cothique in Ulthuan, Celebril came from the minor nobility, an ancient family that had not been relevant in politics for several thousand years, ruling over lands covered mostly by woodland and populated by hunters and loggers. Last of five brothers, Celebril spent a childhood listening to the stories of famous ancestors who had been seafarers and explorers and dreaming to live up to their glory, one day. Lacking connections and means, Celebril studied hard and worked harder, exercising his natural talents in talking and listening, slowly making his way up in society with recommendations from his teacher, then from a merchant of Armille, then a prominent nobleman and finally from the very king of Cothique, whom he served as envoy, inspector and tax collector. It was Falanor IV that recommended him for the service of the Phoenix King, in Lothern, where the young and ambitious Elf was put to service in a special bureau in charge of collecting delicate information - the Ears of the King. Celebril travelled all over Ulthuan and the colonies of the New World talking to traders, officials and nobles, assuming different identities depending on the need of the moment. Celebril was good, perhaps too good.

One day, it happened that his supervisors recommended him for a very delicate position: he was to be sent in the service of a Sea Elf adventurer, Gelmir of Dralas, who had gained himself a position of power in one of the Border Princedoms in the Old World. Posing as an expert in diplomacy, Celebril would support Gelmir, an unofficial ally of Ulthuan, and at the same time he would spy on him sending regular reports to the Ears of the King. Celebril had been immensely excited to travel so far from home, and very proud of the opportunity, but only until he learned that all the other "experts" travelling with him had been sent to Dralas as a mean to get rid of them. There was a pedant bureaucrat, an effemminate archmage, a creepy loremaster, a rowdy musician with a human mother and a painter with a tendency to be excessively promiscous. Still, Celebril tried to make the best of his opportunity, serving Gelmir as best as he could and, at the same time, becoming the best friend of everybody at his court so that he could learn all the secrets worth to be shared with the Ear of the King. This, until Gelmir seriously started to doubt Celebril and decided to send him as an envoy to his main rival, Prince Ettore Malatesta of the mountainous and wild land of Artesia...

Celebril is young but ambitious, smart and exceedingly skilled in talking. He dresses in elegant and precious clothes as befts an envoy of the Regent of Dralas, but he can keep a low profile when needed. He can fight, of course, and carries a sword, but he is always mindful that words can be deadlier than a blade, if spoken to the right people at the right time. He is, most of all, one that dreams big, and tries to make the best of every opportunity, something which has won him the sympathy of Gelmir.

I decided to limit the repainting of this figure to the minimum, by simply adding blue to the overcoat. The white undercoat and other white elements were painted grey and then highlighted in white. The skin was washed with red ink and then highlighted with skin colour. Similarly, metal was blackwashed and highlighted again in the same basic metal colour.

To add some complexity, I covered the base with sand and repainted in green, and added, as a final touch, some gold on the covercoat representing precious embroidery.

It's amazing how much can change with some simple improvements!