Warhammer Lore - Mankind and Chaos

Ian Miller - The Marcher Fortress (1988)

I've been recently reading through the Realm of Chaos books and they are truly incredible: not just for the wonderful artwork, but also for the atmospheric writing. It FEELS like Warhammer, doesn't it? Not a later, diluted, disinfected, retconned shadow of it.

Now, I have noticed one thing that really excites me about how Chaos is described here, and at the same time its lack puts me off in today's GW products. It's always been like this, but I just realized it: the cool thing about the old Chaos is that Man is its main agent in the world.

Ian Miller - The Chaos Knight (2008)

Even in later settings, Mankind can  be corrupted by Chaos, but in Oldhammer Mankind is the first and most important vehicle for the spread of Chaos. Not only the fears of Mankind feed the stuff the Warp is made of, but their actions also create fertile ground for the Ruinous Powers to root and conquer.

That's right - screw you Chaos Warriors! Go away, Beastmen, and eat your heart out, Skaven! Without Mankind, Chaos wouldn't be sure to conquer the Warhammer World. Man is dooming this world, dooming itself and all other races too.

Tony Ackland - Beastmen (1988)

It is Man who fights back the elder races, plunders the cities of Lustria, raids the Elven shores and even burns his own brethren's villages. It is Man who, consciously or not, follows and fulfills the plans of the Chaos Gods: in fact, the tragic doom of many heroes is to attempt to set their own path while being in fact mere pawns, manipulated by the Powers of the Warp.  Skaven live in fear of Man, buried like parasites under his cities, and Orcs are pushed into remote areas by the might of Mankind's armies. No one can stand against Men, except other Men of course!

I love how Man originally was central in the development of Chaos, and it is sad to see how much Mankind became irrelevant, first in Latehammer, and then in Age of Sigmar: Man there is bland, weak, surpassed: nowadays even the Champions of Mankind aren't human anymore, they are now Sigmarines, the "Stormcast Eternal" forged with the souls of heroes and bodies of sigmarite (sic!) to be larger than life. And that's precisely why Latehammer and Aos are unrelatable and boring settings.

Tony Ackland - Daemonologist (198?)

So give us some nice barbarians, some hunters, some militiamen to fight our battles! Give us daemonologists, mutants and corrupted knights as villains! Bring back humanity to Warhammer! Are you listening, GW?

Do you guys agree? No? Let me know in the comments!

Citadel Slann and their successors

 

When you reach the venerable age of 38 and you're still into miniatures, most people will tend to consider you a child who never grew up, but that's not entirely true. Children are children, all right, they are in love with the hobby, but something inside of you is different, and that's the part that proves that you are not child, but in fact an old man. A grumbly old man.

All of us, even those who have the bravery to admit that AoS is actually cool, have succumbed at least once (or more) to the urge to grumble. Italians have a nice word for it: brontolone. Bronto- come from the Greek and means "thunder" (as in brontosaurus, yes) and fittingly calls to mind the image of a distant storm on the horizon, lightning flashing, thunder quietly rolling - all of the evening. There might be even some raindrops on your car, just to make it dirty, but no big actual storm. Just this constant and useless rolling thunder. The French have another word: grognard. That's the word I'm gonna use to tag all posts whose content could be summarized into "back in my time, things were different". Young people rant, we do not: we grumble. Face it, it's in our nature.

This was a very long preamble to introduce the subject of Slann miniatures. We all know who the Slann are (or were, back in my time before the retcon). But where do their concept come from, originally?

I believe the first sketch ever of the Slann might be this piece by John Blanche, titled "Troglodytes", which I found on Ratspike. In spite of the name, these are clearly Slann: the shape of the head, the armour, even the pyramid in the background.

A more mature sketch is the following, also by Blanche. Here the Slann have already developed their name and are drawn in more confident strokes.

After this, GW's staff set themselves to work. Tony Ackland drew Slann for the 2nd Edition of WFB (1983), and also in the later articles Kremlo the Slann (1983) and the Magnificent Sven (1984):

Moreover at the same time, in 1983-1984 - difficult to tell if illustrators influenced sculptors, or it was the other way around - the Perry twins sculpted the first, glorious C32 figures.

These were quite succesful and, in 1986, Citadel issued a new series of Slann, sculpted by Trish Morrison. And these were beautiful, too: it was difficult to spot the difference with the Perry pieces.

Then, for no apparent reason, something terrible happened. The 1987 new Slann relase, designed together by Trish and Aly Morrison, came out, and they looked nothing like the originals:

The new Slann looked more like clumsy toads trying to stand on two feet (with little success). Heads became wide and flat, eyes bulged out and torsos almost disappeared. This was the end of classic Slann: the whole "amphibian master-race from Space" concept was forgotten and, in 1997 they were retconned in favour of the Old Ones and the Lizardmen.

What was left to us, with the name Slann, was this. A bloated, big-headed toad:

And that's the end, as far as GW is concerned. But a lot of people still loved the Slann and independent manufacturers tried to support them with new figures. For some reason, though, most of them were more frogmen than actual Slann as we knew them.

I believe Mirliton's Kermitians were the first. I have a lot of respect for Mirliton, and that's why I will not comment on these figures.

Then it was probably Ral Partha who issued their Bullfrogs. They had way more character than Mirliton's Kermitians, but still looked like anthropomorphic frogs.

Reaper Frogmen are suspiciously similar to the previous, with a bit detail, but with the same inherent flaws.

Otherworld Boglings are less frogs, and more TMNT from the movie (the ugly ones).

Mantic's Frogmen are just more of the same. Good figures, mind me, but nowhere close to the original Slann. These are frogmen, period.

Katsina were the first to give up the "frog on two legs" idea and get closer to the original, with exotic weapons and feathered helms. These are nice, but still only a first step towards the original Perry. To put it clearly: put them on a table next to each other, and you will spot the difference from three metres distance.

And just when everything seemed lost, lo! Tim Prow comes out with the Eru-Kin. And let me say: these are the nicest Slann-like miniatures made after 1986.

Diehard brings out all the old colour (light armour of plates + leather strips, round shields, feathered helms, weird weapons and a meso-American feel) and adds some more in the same tune: this is how you do good Oldhammer in the 2010s. Sure, you say, there is significant difference in the heads:

On one side, a big, tall, bloated head. On the other a more lizard-like, long and flat one. Sure, copyright is still a thing and GW isn't kind to those challenging them. You can't call them Slann. You can't do them exactly the same as John Blanche first drew them. Still, these to me look more "right" than the 1987 Citadel toad-people.

In a perfect world, we would have a second set of heads to replace the lizard-like ones, but in the meantime I must say I am very happy about these. Will probably try to fix them with some greenstuff: I'll let you know how it goes. But even without any fix, this is a huge step in bringing Oldhammer back. Well done, Tim Prow!