- Location
- Somewhere on Earth
Fucking careful with telling the locals that, they might have a heart attack before you can finish the sentence.
Beyond the Rift (WHF/FFXIV)
- Thread starter Maugan Ra
- Start date
- Crossover Mature
Khona Moshr
Pink Flamingo Cabal Healer(they/them)
- Location
- Alabama
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh the Scions do believe they are another shard.
It will be a wakeup call when they see the orcs and hear the denials about the ratmen.
It will be a wakeup call when they see the orcs and hear the denials about the ratmen.
- Location
- Britain
ah I see the protagonist is about to meet some very trustworthy individuals, yes-yes!
To be fair, the officials of the Empire do not want everyone go into mass hysteria if they find out the existence of Skaven and the government had to discreetly handle the ratmen while keeping up the ruse.
Last time the Empire waged open war against Skaven, their previous emperor Mandred Skavenslayer got slain by Skaven ninjas in his sleep.
I think there's probably a difference between 'there are rat beatmen who cause problems' and 'there's a secret underground empire spanning the world with advanced weaponry that is constantly working against us'. Which, you know, is fair. And honestly sounds a lot more within the state capacity of the Empire to actually do.
LordPanther14
The Definition of Insanity
- Location
- Land of the Free
Effectively a cold war is how I like to describe it.
The Skaven have enough to deal with their own problems (namely rival skaven clans, orcs, and dwarfs) that while they view the Empire as an enemy they're generally fine with pulling off some minor operations. Keep the surface empire on their toes, wary and not forget to stay out of their business less they draw the full attention of the Under Empire.
Same with the Old Empire, they have enough problems to deal with on the surface (Orcs, Goblins, Beastmen, Vampires, etc.) that after having on historical record what a full Skaven Empire attack turns into that they are just as willing to keep things quiet. Not push things too far and get a foe that is generally inclined to ignore the lands that they are most interested in.
Making it public to the people on the surface may give them ideas and looking for trouble they never would have found otherwise. Apparently an effective strategy for the length of time this secret is able to last.
The Skaven have enough to deal with their own problems (namely rival skaven clans, orcs, and dwarfs) that while they view the Empire as an enemy they're generally fine with pulling off some minor operations. Keep the surface empire on their toes, wary and not forget to stay out of their business less they draw the full attention of the Under Empire.
Same with the Old Empire, they have enough problems to deal with on the surface (Orcs, Goblins, Beastmen, Vampires, etc.) that after having on historical record what a full Skaven Empire attack turns into that they are just as willing to keep things quiet. Not push things too far and get a foe that is generally inclined to ignore the lands that they are most interested in.
Making it public to the people on the surface may give them ideas and looking for trouble they never would have found otherwise. Apparently an effective strategy for the length of time this secret is able to last.
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Pretty much. The Empire is a-okay with allowing the existence of the Skaven, insofar as 'Skaven' means 'rat beastmen, a variant of the more usual goat-beastmen'. It's the, 'technologically advanced empire plotting doom from beneath our feet in their sprawling tunnels that span the breadth of the Old World and beyond' bit that they clamp down on.
The eternal dynamic of groups with more than a mild amount of internal rivalry: Hostile outside forces are the opposition, the enemy is your peers, who compete for the same budget and resources. Never mind the humans, their doom is inevitable, yes-yes, my true foe is that mouldy-furred excuse for a warlord two caverns down who's been raiding my warpstone stockpile and poaching all the good underlings! Once I crush them, the surfacers will be easy prey-slaves!
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I don't really see why it would be a wakeup call to see orcs? If they think they are on another shard then things being different would make more sense.
Khona Moshr
Pink Flamingo Cabal Healer(they/them)
- Location
- Alabama
- Pronouns
- They/Them
All the shards they've encountered have the same species physically with history and culture being the difference before the floods of light and darkness.
So they aren't expecting different races then the one's they know as seen with their thoughts on the Skaven.
- Location
- Australia
We've seen entirely artificial species on the Source in the Ixali, and have consistently had new races and species being introduced in new expansions- we'd never seen a Viera until the Stormblood patches, never seen the elephant guys until the new expansion, etc.
There's also whole continents we've yet to explore, while none of the shards we've explored to date have more than a single continent remaining we could explore. It's not at all a stretch to conclude that orcs could be a species living on another continent, or even having gone extinct thousands of years ago in a Calamity.
Eh, not really. There are no Ixal on the First since they are a creation of the Allagans.
I hardly think the Scions would know every race on their world.
SneakyWalrus
Is the Water Free?
Judging by how I've seen some of those Miqo'te behave, some of those catboys are entirely similar in regards to morality and behaviour.
Khona Moshr
Pink Flamingo Cabal Healer(they/them)
- Location
- Alabama
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I did forgot about the Ixali being artificial since its been how long since they've shown up in the story? and not much has happened to that plot beat since it was shown.
And I'm not counting the Endwalker sequence since it's more about people uniting to save the world.
You actually got a laugh out of me with that but you you do know that most Beastmen gear is a haphazard thrown together collection that only sometimes fits them and that the stuff you could say was made for them could come from the Chaos Gods considering for example that Chaos Warrior armor is a unique "Gift" each Warrior gets from the Gods. I could easily see the Bestigors getting some of their equipment by way of Blessings of the Dark Gods. Regular Beastmen Gors standout for the poor quality of their gear which is why those dedicated to Tzeentch standout for having swords and axes that look they had actually skill put into them or a unearthly elegance.
Also when I said they steal and loot a lot of their gear I was not referring to just humans, they will steal from and loot bodies of everyone they fight which is every other sentient and non-sentient group of living things on the planet. They also some times trade with other Chaos factions but I doubt that they are any better then Orcs when it comes to making things themselves which is really bad to say the least. Goblins are better then they would be and even they aren't very good at making things.
True and Elriza and her comrades would have to take down the Skaven in their first encounter. That I look forward to.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
No they don't. If this were just an issue of Beastlords and Bestigors, you could maybe argue that they're getting them as gifts - nothing in the books states or implies this, so you're just as much making up answers as me and Revlid, but you could. But it's not just Beastlords and Bestigors. I've asked people twice now to look at the models and the art, and I am no longer asking.
These are regular gors. The unglamorous footsoldiers of the beastmen, Chaos' disfavoured, taken-for-granted children. We can presume they're in the Empire's forests, because that's where the narrative spotlight of the game usually is. Where are they getting giant axes (far too big to be logging axes, and the wrong shape besides), and curved swords, and helm-plates fitted to a goatman's skull? Nobody in the Empire's army is using this kind of stuff. It doesn't look like orc gear either, too angular and square.
Games Workshop are no strangers to the visual lanaguage of factions using gear that was looted from other factions. Ogre Maneaters aren't a new idea, giants have been wearing human-sized shields as a patchy form of scale mail for a good while, and over in 40k the Orks have been looting Leman Russ tanks since donkey's years. If they wanted to make beastmen look like they use looted gear, they could. But nobody in this geographic area makes gear like this, sized and shaped for seven foot tall 'roided out goatmen. The books say they're looting it, but this is nonsense, there's nobody for them to loot it from. The books are wrong.
The only answer that makes sense is that beastmen make their own gear, and this idea that they're too stupid to make anything and steal it all is a pervasive slander by settled peoples like the Empire - a slander that has been aimed at nomads as far back as Greeks and Romans hissing that the nomads they contended with lived entirely by theft and plunder. It wasn't true there, it isn't true here, it simply cannot be.
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Hell, it's even plausible (maybe likely) that they don't have access to much native pure iron and so bands of young gor will raid small settlements just to plunder metal to bring back to their own smiths. Either metal scrap, or ingots, to be melted down and reworked for their own purposes. There's no reason that Beastmen don't have their own traditions of metal-working, even if at the very least generous they came from human smiths who went turnskin.
But looking at the models and the art, the idea that Beastmen can't work metal is absolute nonsense and can be discarded out of hand as either bad writing or in-universe propoganda.
- Location
- Somewhere on Earth
Honestly I have to wonder if Beastmen would have proper forge setups or just like, cold forge all their stuff. Stick iron over a fire barely hot enough to make it softer but they don't care, they can hit it so hard with a hammer a normal man would need two hands to use properly that it just gets beaten into shape.
They have access to Chimeras and other fire breathing beasts, I fully believe they've got a whole Flintstones style setup going on. Complete with two headed Tzeentchian bird going "it's a living"
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Ah, I see! You are proposing a third scenario - that is to say, one you have invented entirely out of wholecloth - whereby Beastmen perform sacrificial rituals and undertake great deeds before the eyes of their dark gods, in exchange for random mundane axes and pauldrons popping straight out of the Realms of Chaos and into the forests outside of Bechafen like they're goddamn loot drops in an MMO.
The problem you are running into is that Beastmen, as a faction, are explicitly written as a parallel to the Germanic and Gallic tribes faced by the Roman Empire - or rather, to their portrayal by the Romans, who tended to depict their "barbarian" opposition either as unstoppable supermen who traded sophistication for honour and insight, as cunning wretches whose innate dishonesty could sometimes be mistaken for cleverness, or as crude savages incapable of higher thought or craft. The specific choice of portrayal flip-flopped depending on what made Rome (or the writer) look better at any given time, but we as semi-objective readers of history can clearly see that a) none of these things were true, because if they were then these people couldn't have done the things they did, b) even if one of these things was true, they can't all be true at the same time.
So Beastmen are intended to evoke the Imperial (and pop cultural) portrayals of certain ancient peoples. However, this means that Beastmen have to be able to accomplish some of the things those ancient people did, while also being described in ways that would make accomplishing those things impossible, because those portrayals were self-aggrandising Imperial propaganda that lacked any internal consistency. Beastmen are stupid and respect only strength, but also clever enough that their army rules revolve around launching ambushes that no other faction can pull off. Beastmen are crude and incapable of actual craft, but also have bespoke armour and weapons, and famously ride chariots specifically made for mutant animals. Beastmen are animalistic and barely even possess a real language, except they do have a language, and by the way here's the alphabet complete with a writing system, and also they seem to be quite commonly multilingual.
You are relying on the Sigmarite Empire's portrayal of Beastmen to be the full and complete truth. This will never make any sense, because it is based on real-life Imperial portrayals of barbarians, which also never made any sense.
You also seem to be referencing the model design of Tzaangors? These were released for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and exist in an entirely different setting as part of an entirely different culture. There's never been a Warhammer Fantasy Tzaangor design that wasn't just "Blue Bestigors".
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Quick Q: have you ever seen a Beastman tabletop model???
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Need to say @Maugan Ra I think it's incredible how you have not just landed the tone of Warhammer Fantasy and Final Fantasy XIV, but also the exact tone of getting new quests in FFXIV. In a meta sense, I can literally see the quest icons and the cutscenes. It's awful. I'm forced to compliment you for this.