Monday 14 December 2015

The call of the Jagdah

Far from being united the Five Tribes of the Appalathian Plains are a scattered folk, each of them barely considers their neighbors better then the orcs or the Children of the Snake and often they would fight against each other over food or shelter.
They are all respectful of their traditions though, most of them predating the Great Migration, and they honor them for fear of Mighty Or's punishment. 
One of the most important and ancient of these rituals, said to have been instituted by the Great Father Himself, is the Falhl-Jagdah, the Great Hunt, taking place once per year in the vast plains after the Moort-Ur, the widest cycle of the sun. 
Every year members of each tribes select ten participant each, chosen from their most skillful hunter and proudest warriors and give them their finest weapons and gears, consecrating them Rhydd, champions of the Hunt.  
Then the Horn of Anvael, a precious relic of the time of the Alderans, is blown three times to awake Mighty Or and all the Spirits of the Ancestors, so that they can judge the warrior's deeds and choose which champions will prove the greatest, and the Jagdah begins under the eye of the gods.  
The hunters must then find and hunt down one of the greatest beasts of the Plains, often a Shar-khan or a mighty Aurok. To do so they always end up having to team up with members of other tribes and work together, drawing advantage not only from their numbers but especially from their different skills and hunting techniques. 
They will run together and bleed together, many of them will find a gruesome death or will starve in the impossibly wide plains or will end up in enemy territories and become the preys of murderous greyskins or savage monsters from the wild. To survive and succeed they will find out that cooperation is their only hope and bonds stronger than iron are often born from these events, even among members of different tribes.Once the prey is finally killed the few survivors often find out that where once stood an enemy now stands a friend and comrade.
Then Mighty Or smiles down at them because He knows His most important lesson has not been forgotten: 

"United they will prevail, Divided they will fall to darkness"






The second one of my ghurian hunters is finished... Well, almost actually, I still want to improve some areas but these are table top models so I am fine with them not being perfect. I am pretty pleased with the result, though  the tattoo on the face does not fully convince me for some reason…
The plan is to start with around ten of them and have a warband core of hunters, a pack of 5-10 hunting wolves (fenrisian wolves) the wandering King to guide them and a massive beast (I already purchased a Stonehorn) to give them some muscle power!
Then I've got great plans for future expansions, like a rogue regiment of skeletons from the Uplands, Sylvaneth from the Grey Masks Wood, hunting parties form each of the Five Tribes and a group of the mysterious Orar's Brides, converted form witch elves... but one step at a time, first I'll have to complete my ten Blackfeathers!


I started painting the Wandering King as well but I felt discouraged after a couple of layers of Baneblade Brown and now it is lying on my desk waiting for a month long paintjob!

14 comments:

  1. I think that my favourite thing of the finished models is how you do the "red war paint". It looks really real

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  2. Thanks Man!
    It's actually really easy! I just paint the skin tone and then wash with three/four layers of very watered down Mephiston Red and voilĂ ! I then add some black tattoos with Charadon Granite and Abaddon Black.
    The secret is, as usually, to water down your colours as much as you can... It requires a lot of patience but it's always rewarding!

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  3. Hagen, the leather work on his bracers is unbelievable! It's a fantastic model you've made there

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  4. Cheers Matt! the leather was also pretty straightforward, just some dark brown highlighted with some flesh colour (tuskgor fur, cadian and kislev flesh if I remember it correctly).
    The parts that gave me more troubles were the bones actually, I wanted a polished bone finish, as they took good care of their equipment, so I had to highlight from Baneblade brown all the way up to white scar, which was a painfully slow process! But it turned out nice methink, though a bit rougher than I'd like in some areas, but hey, I am fine with it, as I said, I intend to play with them eventually, they won't just sit in my cabin hopefully!

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    1. Well I think the bone looks great! And I must say I really do not care at all for the aesthetic of the chaos armies, but what you are doing with these is absolutely brilliant. The implied savagery in your conversions is far more believable.

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    2. It's good to hear that Matt! I think the problem with chaos esthetic is that often they have no culture they are referring to, they are just barbaric dudes with no societies, no distinctive traits, no traditions apart from killing and screaming praises to the dark gods.
      What I am aiming to do with my Ghurians is to give them a cohesive look through conversion/painting so that they resemble an actual society not just a bunch of random muscled thugs. Inspiration comes of course pretty evidently from the Iroquois Five Nations, a story always deeply fascinated me and I finally found a chance to introduce in a fantasy setting! I might go more in detail about that in future posts though.

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    3. That's one of the big reasons I've never really liked them. I know they're supposed to somewhat resemble vikings but they certainly do not have the cultural richness that the vikings did, which I love. The other reason is that I've always related more with the knights in shining armor than the barbarians covered in blood.

      Also, having lived in Western New York for most of my life and also having a fascination with Native Americans, I definitely am very excited to see you bring this idea to life through warhammer conversions!

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  5. Excellent work as always! Do you use Citadel paints exclusively?

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  6. Indeed, I know there are a lot of excellent ranges out there but I just never felt the urge to change my beloved colours (except when the damn new pots dry my colours up before I get a chance to actually use them!)

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  7. I can't wait to see Orar's Brides!

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  8. hehe, me neither Christopher, but it might take a while... I do have some nice conversion ideas and some sketches done for them, and I might post them later this week if I can... Orar himself will have the precedence though, as the rest of my Blackfeathers and the Jagars (the wolves) accompanying them.

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  9. This is truly amazing. The way youhave taken the miniatures and made them your own is incredibly inspiring. The fiction is also stellar.

    I hope there is more to come.

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    1. Thank you very much Alexander!
      I will take some time to update all of you on why my blog has been so silent lately and where I'm heading to hobby-wise... Not entirely good news unfortunately, but I want to let you all know that I am alive and kicking and my ghurians will have a future!

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