Remove ads

Two Warhammer Fantasy ideas

Reader mode
W

WheelOfFortune

Hello!

I have been a lurker and then a participant in quests for a while now and I have two quest ideas. Both of them are in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. I originally got into it by the many good quests here.

The first idea is a simple concept. In my mind at least, the Skaven would have so much potential to be many things if they cut themselves off of the Horned Rats ruinous teachings. While I love a good redemption story, the players do not have to be the good guy but the basic have to cut themselves off of the Horned Rat and Chaos as a whole and are starting to explore new concepts outside of their normal egotistical perspective. There are a buntch of approaches I could do but I am not sure which if any to do. The first approach is inspired by @@DragonParadox From Hell's Heart: A Warhammer Fantasy Quest. In that quest, you play as a demon who has cut itself away from Chaos is trying to redeem the beastmen. You either play as a lone Skaven or a group of Skaven worshipers who have (for reasons I still have to think about) voluntarily started worshipping a non-chaos god or a lone Skaven or a group of Skaven worshipers who have been forcibly cut off of the horned rat's influence and have been forced into a non-Skaven civilization somehow or a Verminlord who has betrayed the Horned Rat for reasons and has become a non-chaotic entity. Whether it is a quest where you play as a group like @@torroar's Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism or a more individual approach like @BoneyM's Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest is still being decided.


Possibly any combination of those because I am still deciding everything and would like to hear your thoughts and possible reasons and scenarios for any of the above or below to happen.

The second quest ideas are from@Xantalos From a Dead World and Respect Your Elders v2 - Galactic Boogaloo. We have Skaven in Space and Lizardmen in Space but I want Dwarves in Space. one or both of the regular Dwarfs or the Chaos Dwarfs. That is what I want but unfortunately, I do not know what the reasons for either of them to develop spaceflight would be or anything like that. I am also wondering whether they should go to Warhammer40K or a different space setting such as Star Wars or Star Trek or Sword of the Stars or Stellaris.

Please give me SOME sort of feedback!
 
I would like to see redeemed Skaven, though the issue with them is that Skaven are basically the super-Chaos humans so it might be worth considering which aspects of Skaven life and culture the Redeemed will keep so as not to leave them feeling generic.
 
Feel free to recycle my dwarf evacuation idea from FADW, where Grungni and the other ancestor gods temporarily turn the northern Chaos Gate into a portal that an exodus comprised of a sampling of the population of the surviving holds could go through. From there it'd be simple to have them find themselves on a world in whatever setting, and then timeskip until they get to space tech level.

As far as dawi-zharr, I still reckon my initial method of having them build a bigass rocket with its thrust spells powered by mass slave mulching, and the majority of their populace turned into statues temporarily for stasis. They blast off and spend however many thousands of years drifting through space until they land on a planet, and then boom, quest go.
 
WheelOfFortune said:
You either play as a lone Skaven or a group of Skaven worshipers who have (for reasons I still have to think about) voluntarily started worshipping a non-chaos god or a lone Skaven or a group of Skaven worshipers who have been forcibly cut off of the horned rat's influence and have been forced into a non-Skaven civilization somehow or a Verminlord who has betrayed the Horned Rat for reasons and has become a non-chaotic entity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

One way to do this would be the Pestilens Gambit. The official line on Clan Pestilens is that they worship their own quixotic understanding of the Horned Rat, but it's often suspected that they're actually worshipping Nurgle instead, whether they know it or not. Some other deity could 'infiltrate' Skaven society by offering a 'different understanding of the Horned Rat' if that new understanding comes with power, as everyone in Skaven society is always looking for a new edge.

WheelOfFortune said:
We have Skaven in Space and Lizardmen in Space but I want Dwarves in Space. one or both of the regular Dwarfs or the Chaos Dwarfs. That is what I want but unfortunately, I do not know what the reasons for either of them to develop spaceflight would be or anything like that. I am also wondering whether they should go to Warhammer40K or a different space setting such as Star Wars or Star Trek or Sword of the Stars or Stellaris.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Warhammer's Deep Lore is very sci fi. All you have to do to achieve this is posit that they rediscover enough information from the works or writings of the Old Ones to make the technology possible, including a way for them to either gather energy directly from the Warp or otherwise turn other forms of energy into something that can fuel Runecraft since their won't be ambient Winds to draw upon. Once it's possible it could be a very easy sell to find enough colonists to make it happen, because many Dwarves would prefer their own descendants to face environmental hazards of a new world instead of being born into a world flooded with magical energies and hostile beings that are entirely inimical to them. The Chaos Dwarves would be in a better position to make this happen as they're a more top-down society without links to the works of their ancestors they'd need to abandon, but they'd also have to transform their society to do so as they'd no longer be able to import arbitrary amount of slaves from raiding and trading. Perhaps they'd learn to rely only on Dwarves, Dwarf-based mutants, and daemons, or perhaps they'd have to develop a way to 'farm' and control greenskin ecology so they they get enough of the required muscle but it doesn't take over the entire ship.
 
What about a Skaven accidentaly creating some potion or drug that cuts their link to the Horned Rat. Have dens of Skavens getting high on empathy XDD

Another option I wondered once was some Skaven mage creating a Brute, trying to make them resistant to magic, but ending with the Brute disconected from the Horned Rat and being the big voice of conscience to their team of skaven scouts
 
Remove ads
Hmm. Tough call overall; the skaven are thematically a species that is basically humanity with all the worst qualities turned up to 11 - they're selfish, betrayal-happy, find the concept of a common good anathema to their nature, and tend to be their own worst enemies. They're even inversions of how rats normally act; a colony of rats is normally quite harmonious, but if you put them in a too-small enclosure with nothing to do and underfeed them, you quickly see them starting to eat each other, shit everywhere, etc. This was a learned behavior too; in the studies where this happened, the children of said rats, when taken and raised in more healthy enclosures, were normal, well-adjusted rats.

Applying all this to the skaven means that a large part of their shitty behavior comes from their environment and upbringing, and thus their faction aesthetics as a whole. Get rid of the overcrowding that teaches each skaven to grab what it can, when it can, and never to depend on anyone, and you get rid of the huge hordes of rat men shtick. Get rid of the hygiene issues, you discard Pestilens. Remove the pressure for results that comes from a ruthless Darwinian meritocracy as a social ladder, and you get rid of a lot of their wacky, untested super tech that's more often than not powered by the suffering of the common plebeian rat.

All in all, turning the skaven not-bad, or going further into good, would effectively make them into ... well, a lens to view the good traits of humans through. Definitely more in common with elves or halflings than their current aesthetic. Probably could draw inspiration from Redwall.
 
A second idea for a mirror race besides the Skaven is mirrors of the Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, and Vampire Coast. I have not made that many ideas for any of them yet I find the idea of mirror undead and particularly a concept for mirror vampires could be cool.

The concept for mirror vampires is that instead of drinking blood and being disconnected from the Warp, they leech off something that is at least slightly less harmful for the living- They feed off of the living's impact on the warp, such as their prayers to the gods or to the vampires itself. The vampires work like Warp black holes or nulls in 40k, in that their mere presence distills or if attacking, can completely destroy Warp creatures like demons. The vampiric influence is different too, in that the warp can greatly be diminished in the vampire's lands. This leads to effects that I am still thinking about.

I would like to hear your feedback on any of the above.
 
In order to keep the Skaven distinctly Skaven you would need to keep their paranoia and megalomania (two sides of the same coin anyway) - the break with the Horned Rat would work best with a small population that somehow ends up in a place where the Horned Rat cannot reach them - maybe it has ancient wards that deny any god entry. From there they actually have room to build up a non-overcrowded civilization.
 
Could the dwarves and chaos dwarves go to space because they want some mine out the moons?

Probably a dumb question but I'm all for encouraging this sort of discussion.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top