Song of the Old Ones Song of the Old Ones Slann Chapter Praise be the Old Ones and all they devise First of the First all hail the mighty Slann Mighty in Magic, powerful and wise Upon their minds rests the Old Ones’ Great Plan Earth, sea, flame, sky, over all they tower Cold blood and warm blood, all life shall serve Light, shadow, death yield high magic power All praises and honors the Slann deserve Five Spawnings will oversee the world sphere Eternally, they serve their divine roles Preserved in death, maintain their bodies here Great Rituals preserve their mighty souls Just below the Old Ones, the Slann stand tall Strong and wise, with dominion over all Song of the Old Ones Saurus Chapter Praise be the Old Ones and all that they spawn Praise be the Saurus second of the First Warring till all Anathema are gone Destroying the Old Foes, Fallen and cursed They serve as fang and talon of the Slann Hides and scale of their masters faithfully Safeguard the Wise Ones serving the Great Plan For the Slann they battle endlessly Age and sickness the Saurus will not know Only through battle may Saurus find death Each scar endured the Saurus shall grow Stronger and stronger till their final breath Strong for all First, they help all the others Standing strong with their spawning brothers Song of the Old Ones Skink Chapter Praise be the Old Ones and all that they make Praise be the Skinks, Third spawning of the First Tasks too small for Slann the Skinks undertake The First’s vital tasks between Skinks disbursed What Saurus cannot destroy, skinks shall waylay When Saurus rage grows too strong, Skinks restrain Through cunning and poison, foes they shall slay Outside of war, the cities they maintain From many spawnings the Skinks are amassed Workers, warriors, masters of the beast Each Skink spawned with his own preordained caste All serve the Great Plan both greatest and least Their vital tasks are many and varied Upon their backs, other First carried Song of the Old Ones Third Race Praise to the Old Ones and all that they birth Third of their creations, brave, strong, and stern Stone and metal they will work from the earth Metal talons and fangs might they can earn Runic power, mightiest of the Third Bind Chaos power in metal in stone Use of symbol, glyph, and powerful word Harness the power for Order alone The mountains and hills the Third will defend Like the mountains that sustain them they stand Anathema and Old Foes they shall rend Their strength and courage meets every demand Beware the Third Race’s greed; take them to task Should the Third’s reach exceed their grasp Song of the Old Ones Fifth Race Praise to the Old Ones and all they beget Their Fifth undertaking, sadly is crude Their incomplete state, the Old Ones regret Their drives are set for obtaining of food Almost giant size or small like a runt Food fuels their bodies, hunger fuels their deeds Achieving success, their methods are blunt Great resourcefulness, they meet all their needs The aura of Chaos, they shall resist Ultimate survivors when others fail Against all dangers the eaters persist Tenacity allows them to prevail Beware the Fifth Race’s hunger and lust They’re greedy and selfish, unworthy of trust
Well I'm not Bowser and I wrote this. I thought I gave it away with this. I was sketching a very rough draft for a long time. My goal was to come up with a stylized, rituatilized, but relatively simple description of how Skinks and Saurus are supposed to see themselves and the other Forces of Order, at least on paper. It was loosely based on Tolkien's poem that Treebeard sang about the Free people. I also toyed with basing the format on the Beatitudes to convey a religious aspect. Blessed are the Saurus...Blessed are the Skinks, but that would be an insult to the big JC. I don't have a problem with religious allegories in fiction. I like Aslan. The point of the Beatitudes was that they are counterintuitives. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who are persecuted. The Beatitudes challenged paradigms, and I'm not doing that. My poem is creating the Lizardmen's status quo, not challenging it. Then TD4 gave me this format and I opted to use it. Thank you to @thedarkfourth for the format advice. Thankyou to @pendrake and @spawning of Bob for proofreading assistance. I plan to tinker with this. I plan to write about Kroxigor, Elves, Humans, and Ogres/Halflings (the Eaters). I have at least a verse or two on everyone but the Eaters. Frankly, I think the Halflings and Ogres are very poorly written by GW writers and I wish they were not part of the setting. I haven't closed myself off to verses about topics other the races that compose the Forces of Order, but my ideas are less concrete. I also toyed with the idea of prefacing chapters of my fluff pieces with excerpts from the Song of the Old Ones if it can enhance the story. Anyone I'm open to suggestions and I will probably polish my poem in very slow increments.
In your epic: make the Ogres and Halflings the afterthoughts that they actually were. Just ignore the most recent official fluff.