Malekith, ever given to a cautious mindset in such matters, believes it is he to whom the prophecy refers, and he is determined to cheat that destiny, one severed head at a time.
Malekith believes himself to the Protagonist of Warhammer Fantasy, of course he thinks that a vague great ancient prophecy must be referring to himself specifically.
IIRC Diederick Kastner was progney of a rape commited by a Norscan raider and an Imperial noblewoman.
That said, IIRC in EoT it's revealed that Archaon's father is actually Be'lakor, who possessed the man who sired Archaon and proceeded to perform the rape that would lead to Archaon's conception as part of a plot to bring about the next everchosen.
Be'lakor is a (daemon) prince, which would make Archaon a (daemon) prince's son.
What if Be'lakor was Destined to be destroyed by Archeon according to the prophecy? Wouldn't Malekith have made everyone's lives miserable for absolutely no reason?
Nagash is no deity, not even by the most cynical metaphysical take of the Warhammer pantheons, merely a man engorged on dark magic beyond the ken. I find the idea of linking WHF vampires and necromancers to divinity somewhat repulsive.
We've enough evil deities in Warhammer already, let's not enshrine another, especially baselessly.
What if Be'lakor was Destined to be destroyed by Archeon according to the prophecy? Wouldn't Malekith have made everyone's lives miserable for absolutely no reason?
Nah. They live on a death world, of course they're not going to respond to 'no jobs for you' with 'okay I'll just die now'. People strive to survive no matter what, and the Strigany arguably have more reason to stay mobile and fight for everything they need than the modern day Romani do, because the Romani aren't in danger of being killed by a horde of Beastmen or Orcs as they travel Europe or North America.
It's only their vampiric affiliations that could be seen as problematic, and even that frankly is a matter of leeway. Almost every other human polity worships a set of gods who request much from them, it's just that the Strigany gods are cast in the vein of being oppositional entities. And the thing about Strigos is that it worked. The Vampires carried out services in exchange for sacrifice and worship, no different than the Lady, Sigmar or Ulric.
Did it work? The Strigoi did fail to defend their mortal charges from the Orcs of the Badlands. Strigos effectively had its own version of the End of Times happen to it thousands of years before before the rest of the human realms of the Old World because the Strigoi weren't up to the task, unlike Sigmar against Morkar, Nagash and in Blackfire Pass, or the Grail Companions in the twelve battles.
Nagash is no deity, not even by the most cynical metaphysical take of the Warhammer pantheons, merely a man engorged on dark magic beyond the ken. I find the idea of linking WHF vampires and necromancers to divinity somewhat repulsive.
We've enough evil deities in Warhammer already, let's not enshrine another, especially baselessly.
That was explicitly how Strigos came to be though. The ancient people of Strigos worshipped Nagash as a god, and Ushoran took over them by convincing them that he was a messanger of Nagash via his powers as a vampire.
Fair enough. in EoT Nagash kills Morr and absorbs his powers, becoming Warhammer's new god of death in the process, but in Fredrick's time he doesn't even have that position by right of conquest yet, and this time Manfred isn't around to help bring him back, thought that bugger Arkhan is still up and about.
Fair enough. in EoT Nagash kills Morr and absorbs his powers, becoming Warhammer's new god in the process, but in Fredrick's time he doesn't even have that position by right of conquest yet, and this time Manfred isn't around to help bring him back, thought that bugger Arkhan is still up and about.
In EoT, Finubar comes to the understanding that he and all post Aenarion Phoenix Kings were fakes and pretenders, and out of his despair from his understanding that he was never truly worthy of being Phoenix King, lets Malekith kill him with a summoned bloodletter without fighting back.
Preach. The only way Malekith exists where he doesn't make literally everyone and everything, probably including himself, miserable as absolute fuck, is a world where he either a.) wasn't born, b.) wasn't raised by his mom, or c.) didn't get fucked over by the Flame of Asuryan (due to Morathi being Morathi probably) and rose to become the quality Phoenix King he had the potential to be, if not for the aforementioned Morathi/Sidious (I prefer Moridious) influence that pretty much just ruined....everything ever. As Morathi is wont to do
Did it work? The Strigoi did fail to defend their mortal charges from the Orcs of the Badlands. Strigos effectively had its own version of the End of Times happen to it thousands of years before before the rest of the human realms of the Old World because the Strigoi weren't up to the task.
The Dwarves should stop worshipping the Ancestor Gods. Anyone from Drakwald or Solland should turn away from the Human Gods. The Nagarythe should abandon the Elven Pantheon. The Lady really failed those two Duchies I can't remember the names of. The Chaos Dwarves really had the right idea embracing Hashtut.
I gotta say, as utterly horrifying and dread-inducing as they are, the opportunity to see Black Arks described and depicted by Torroar is a dream come true.
I mean like he's one of the greatest when it comes to detail of high fantasy stuff without going overboard or under, and Black Arks are vanishingly rare in literary form. This is a real treat. A terrifying, potentially apocalyptic treat, but a treat nonetheless.
why do you think no one likes to talk about that pile of dog shit , its why when Manfred got true killed everyone was feeling warm and fuzzy inside cause it was that asshole who ruined everything in the end and caused the world to be destroyed by backstabbing everyone just as they were about the save the world from the end times
oh and it turns out Malekith was the rightful phenix king all along and that Assuryan was just pulling his leg when he burned him in phenix flame and both the wood elves and the high elves accept him as their ruler as soon as they find out including Alith Anar the shadow king
The Dwarves should stop worshipping the Ancestor Gods. Anyone from Drakwald or Solland should turn away from the Human Gods. The Nagarythe should abandon the Elven Pantheon. The Lady really failed those two Duchies I can't remember the names of. The Chaos Dwarves really had the right idea embracing Hashtut.
You're the one who stated that the cult of the Strigoi made sense because "it worked". It doesn't seem wrong to point out that Strigos no longer exists because the Strigoi offered inadequate protection, putting doubt to the claim that "it worked" which is used to base the legitimacy of the cult on unlike the other major cults in human realms in the Old World, which did manage to protect the Empire and Bretonnia until the End of Times.
In a very real sense Strigos is a nation whose Gilles and Sigmar equivalent failed, and whose realm was put to the torch as a result.
The Lady of the Lake is revealed to be the elven goddess Lileath. Lileath's/the Lady's plan for the End of Times is to abandon the Old World for a different planet populated by those few mortals she considers worthy who are to be ruled by her elven lover and their daughter.
On the plus side Gilles, revealed to have been the Green Knight all along, goes out like a boss by deciding to defend the last piece of Bretonnia to the end even without the Lady and is joined up by Abhorash, the two of them teaming up against the oncoming forces of Chaos. It's stated by Josh Reynolds that the two never fell in battle against the massive daemonic horde they faced, their struggle only ending when the world itself falls apart.
The user has been removed from the thread for use of a slur, in addition to advocating for a World War. Don't do it again.
To explain a bit further; "Sperg Out" is derogatory slang/a slur utilized by many people to describe "A fit of rage/tantrum" or "To ramble in excessive detail, as someone with Asperger's syndrome would stereotypically do." It's not a kind word, it's intended to hurt. On SV, we do not utilize slurs against other users, especially when there's a threadbanner stating quite clearly to; "Lay off the Personal Attacks and consider your posts carefully."
"Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."
You're the one who stated that the cult of the Strigoi made sense because "it worked". It doesn't seem wrong to point out that Strigos no longer exists because the Strigoi offered inadequate protection, putting doubt to the claim that "it worked" which is used to base the legitimacy of the cult on unlike the other major cults in human realms in the Old World, which did manage to protect the Empire and Bretonnia until the End of Times.
In a very real sense Strigos is a nation whose Gilles and Sigmar equivalent failed, and whose realm was put to the torch as a result.
It worked for them, no different than Sigmar for Solland and so on. The only difference is that Strigos stood alone and the other places I mentioned didn't. The other gods had more room to fail, doesn't mean that the Strigany were wrong to trust their 'gods'.
Ghouls, oftentimes called Crypt Ghouls, are living humans who have fallen prey to one of the great issues of the world of Mallus. Specifically, starvation. It is known to be a common issue, and of those who suffer such a fate, there are those who commit a great and terrible sin. That being to feed upon the flesh of their fellow humans. However! This is more than a grave sin, it is an exercise in sin that is one of the greatest exercises of a God's disfavor known to exist - if one believes in such things. If one were, however, they would say that Morr himself has declared that to desecrate the flesh of their fellow Human curses you irrevocably with the taint of the Ghoul.
Your body twists, your flesh turns putrid, your skin turns filthy. Bulging, swelling bloodshot eyes turn ever more hideous. Your lips peel away permanently, teeth are primitively and crudely filed down by the ghouls in some primal attempt to ensure that they can tear flesh apart better. The minds, in turn, degrade as well. As with the soul, so follows the body and mind, yes? More bestial, more frenzied, ever hungrier. The more flesh consumed, the more the gnawing need grows, until almost every aspect of the ghoul becomes attuned to finding and devouring more - whether corpse or fresh, the human meat is the thing, and the thing is human meat.
However! The progress of the curse is not too quick, more often than not. Slow enough that Night's Dark Masters notes that when those begin to present the symptoms, they are often driven away by their neighbors or relatives out of misplaced mercy rather than killed outright. It is just that doing so hastens the curse, for being pushed out of society allows them to feast all the more freely, crypts and graveyards being feasting grounds.
And yet, no matter what, a curious fact remains.
Ghouls are alive.
Half-alive, in some respects, but alive enough for one important thing to be true: they do NOT require necromantic magic to animate and sustain themselves. This is their great advantage, for the Strigoi, and noted more than once, is that to paraphrase - ghouls will continue to fight on even if their master's magic should fail. Unlike their depiction in TWW, where just about all units in a VC army will dissolve/crumble/etc. in most other depictions, ghouls are too alive to be so easily dispatched. They bleed, they eat, they drink, they do not ape life like some zombies might but are themselves a twisted form of life. Their blood is noted to be 'sour' to the Strigoi who feed on them, so definitely not the orgiastic wonder of regular human blood, but 'sour' is better than 'ash' like with corpse blood and vermin blood like the Strigoi who normally have them. They're inherently connected to Dhar, on some weird level, ghouls, but at the same time still manage to cling to the upper side of the mortal coil. And, depending on where in the progression of the curse you catch one, they are still quite capable.
See first the story of the Unternehmung, which I'll repost here because it folds in with everything else but I'll make it a spoiler now:
When Captain Schluter of the good ship Unternehmung took on two of the River Strigany as crew, he paid no heed to the ridiculous rumours of superstitious sailors. The Strigany proved to be hard working and knew their way around a boat as if they were born to it. All this nonsense about being in league with the powers of darkness was clearly rot. Then the food spoiled. Every last morsel on board went bad, weeks out from land. His crew's bellies started grumbling, and so did they. Mutiny was inevitable, and the Strigany, having proven sound fellows, were its ringleaders. The first order of business was to round up the captain and those crewmembers still loyal to him and lock them in the brig. The second order of business was to haul them back out of the brig and cook them up to replace the spoiled supplies. The Unternehmung sailed for weeks with no sight of land, and more and more of the prisoners were eaten. But each time another scapegoat was chosen to go in the pot, the crew only seemed to get hungrier. The hunger was like a living thing, gnawing at their bellies and whispering dark thoughts into their brains. When Nanosh of the Strigoi finally climbed out of his coffin of grave dirt stowed in the hold and showed himself, his servants had done their work. Every surviving member of the Unternehmung's crew was a ravening Ghoul, ready to serve their new captain eagerly if it meant fresh meat. Now, Nanosh and the Unternehmung crew sail through seas of blood, launching night-time raids on ships and coastal towns, dragging screaming meat back onto their ship for future meals. Even the pirates of Sartosa fear the Unternehmung and her Ghoulish crew.
And an assorted grouping of quotes from Night's Dark Masters and the Old World Bestiary - A Compendium of Creatures Fair and Foul:
"Don't look at me like that. It was this, or bein' too weak to walk home no more." — Anton Haas, Ghoul
"These creatures always amuse me. Oh, certainly they can be useful – having minions who can go out in the daylight, however much they might not want to, is not to be underrated. Yet the irony is not lost on me, that I have some Humans (or former Humans, if you want to be precise) who are so desperate for the scraps from my table that they will even fight the rest of you for the chance to bite on a few corpses." – Constantin von Carstein, Vampire Lord
"It seems likely that these creatures were once Human, just as the storytellers say. Contemporary accounts from Sylvania indicate that even prior to the coming of Vlad von Carstein, and his introduction of the curse of Vampirism to Sylvania, the first Ghouls were already abroad. Even before the days when the nobility of the land were predominantly Vampires, the local Lords still abused and neglected their peasants. Many ordinary folk preferred to eat Human flesh rather than starve. Almost certainly they were wrong to do so, but they were desperate. They and their descendants paid their price for their folly, their lineage cursed forever, their forms degenerate and their eating habits as abhorrent as ever. Some of them took service with the von Carsteins when Vlad took Sylvania as his own; others follow Vampires and their retinues unbidden, anticipating good eating when the Undead are abroad. Still others skulk in the shadows, retaining a complete independence from the Vampires who rule Sylvania. It is perhaps those independents that have been at the vanguard of the Ghoul migration out from Sylvania and into the rest of the Old World. However it occurred, the Empire is now plagued by these most unpleasant creatures." – Heinrich Malz, High Priest of Verena, Nuln.
"Oooo, tha's lovely. I like's my marrow gamey, but raw and wet's fine here and there. Pass on some more of his shoulder, eh?" – Unnamed (and unusually intelligent) Ghoul
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So what does this tell us? It tells us that Ghouls are capable of independence, but it is exceedingly rare, and that they are capable of intelligence, but only in the initial stages and that they eventually become bestial ever-hungry savages. Capable of using a club of wood or bone or metal, perhaps, but falling inevitably back on their claws and fangs more than anything else. But wait! That is not the whole story.
The Tale of the Unternehmung is a perfect example of how ghouls can be more than just, you know, pale hunchbacked cannibal cavemen. The Unternehmung is a ship that now sails the seas, and is a horrible monstrous ship that is feared on the waters. But for it to be like that, it needs to be, you know, sailed. Maintained. Yes, the crew are all ghouls, and slavering cannibals, and eager to feast and kill, but they still serve a Strigoi who purposefully corrupted them into being the crew of the ship. And a crew they remain, with a Strigoi they follow rather than the good captain who once properly led them.
Furthermore, Urzen the Unrelenting, former military advisor to Ushoran himself, is noted in Night's Dark Masters to spend every single night in his secret holdfast in Ostland [Disclaimer: Urzen is not in Ostland in DoDA. No I'm not telling you where he ended up instead.] doing something curious. He holds military drills. Changing formations. Training and testing his slowly growing army of undead - and ghouls. The latter part is interesting. Because while it is noted that it is a weird thing to do, it is still something he's doing, and continuing to do so. He's successfully running ghouls through military drills, creating not just a mindless horde of ghouls like Vorag Bloodytooth tried in the Dark Lands, but an actual army of undead and ghouls both.
Then you've got Crypt Horrors, which are basically super Crypt Ghouls who have consumed a vampire's blood, in a sorta messed up not-quite Blood Kiss. Very few vampires are cool with this, think it's disgusting, idiotic, shameful, etc. But the big power boost is undeniable, and some Strigoi Ghoul Kings are okay with doing it more regularly. It's literally described as breaking every taboo that all other vampires hold to, which is another reason they really don't like Strigoi.
So I would say, in greater conclusion, that ghouls are capable of being somewhat intelligent? Overall? But they're really restricted, perhaps to skills they retained in their lives before they fell to the Ghoul Curse/Curse of Morr/Cannibal Curse(?). Or that they can still be trained, but you need to be a powerful necromancer or vampire to be able to force their savage spirits into obedience and learning, even if it goes against the state they've devolved into.
Anyway, hope this answered most ghoul questions, now that I'm finally back home.
It's a little scary that Ghrond has apparently been able to use magic to influence Laurelorn…from, it is implied, Ghrond itself.
That's stuff only the Slann have done, intercontinental ranged magic. Nothing compared to the Time of Woes obviously but still. And against a magical forest, though whether that makes it less or more susceptible to such is up in the air.
Edit: Yeah it was always a curious thing to me that Ghouls are undead, yet, not undead. I know there's a lot of stuff you mentioned Torroar but that resonated with me, I've always had that thought every time ghouls come up.
It worked for them, no different than Sigmar for Solland and so on. The only difference is that Strigos stood alone and the other places I mentioned didn't. The other gods had more room to fail, doesn't mean that the Strigany were wrong to trust their 'gods'.
Well I mean, let's be real, someone made mistakes at some point if you're willingly worshipping undead horrors from your nightmares that tend to view you as livestock to protect and eventually feed upon
