8th Ed. Lizardmen Novels

Any come recommended?

Would love to read some more fluff! But some of the warhammer novels are pure drivel..

 

Temple of the Serpent wasn't bad, but in all honesty it's more of a Skaven book than a Lizardmen book.

 

I've heard this one mentioned before! Might check it out.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Any others read anything good?

 

If you can get hold of it (try Amazon) the first Florin and Lorenzo is a good read, funny and with quite a few passages from the point of view of the Lizardmen. It is one of my favourite Warhammer novels. Is it gonna win the Booker prize? Probably not, but it is a good read!

 

'The Burning Shore' is pretty much the only other novel about Lizardmen. Its pretty old though, I only found a copy through eBay.

 

That's the one i meant!

 

No wonder I haven't been able to find many books on them..

There are only really 2.

Thanks for the titles though guys! I'll start scouring the internet for copies

 

I think the problem is that from a personality perspective... Lizardmen are very boring. They don't have much "grey" area's in their culture on decision making which leads to very little conflict... and thus not much fluff.

 

Not at all.

Slann are ancient beings who are perfectly capable of independent thought, and have even on occasion killed eachother in disagreements. Their minds are very alien (they consider the world and the warp through high level mathematics, and they find empathising with low-level creatures nearly impossible).

Skink Priests are quite intelligent, and there is at least one famous example of a Priest totally defying the Slann (or rather, the Slann were too busy being sick to help out in the practical need for war). Sotek is a god that none of the Slann are entirely sure exists, and the Prophet was recently killed because a Slann decided the threat Sotek represented was greater than the potential benefits.

Saurus though are 'boring', as per your definition. They're basically living weapons, so it could be hard to create pathos or drama from their lives. They're barely mentioned in that way in the few narratives that exist however. A Slann or Skink usually takes centre stage, for the reason I outlined above.

 

Can you recommend any other fluff readings taipan? Even internet articles or whatever. All I've read is the fluff in the army books (dating back for the past 12 years )

 

Even after all that I still don't see how you really disprove my point. Compared to the other races in Warhammer the Lizardmen are very one dimensional and I feel that makes them boring, fluff wise. The Lizardmen are an ancient race and they only have a handful of events where a disagreement occurred. The entire culture pretty much revolves around doing whatever the Slaan says. There is viturally no free will, and free will is, in my opinion, needed for conflict.

Look at the lack of fluff. I love Lizardmen but the Fluff isn't even from the Lizardmen perspective because they lack depth on the individual level.

 

It would have to be written from a skinks perspective. They're the only ones who really preserve and create any sort of culture and social structure.

I recall a passage from a previous army book describing a man who made it to a lizardman city and was met by a skink who spoke arabic or something.

There's potential there, it just hasn't been realized.

 

Here's kinda of a kool short story about Tichi-Huichi and his Raiders.
http://bloodbowl.arnholm.nu/images/Skink_Raiders.pdf

 

Thanks for that n810!

 

Lexicanum is a good source.
'Burning Shore' and 'Temple of the Serpent' are excellent
There is also 'Dragonmage' from the Storm of Magic series, worth reading even though we only feature partially
The army book is pretty good. It details the disagreements of the Slann, the potential heresy of the Cult of Sotek, the different eras etc. Plenty of narrative and characterisation.

It's not really about disproving your impression, opinion is subjective by definition. I just don't agree with your viewpoint. Doesn't mean your wrong necessarily (or I am right), but I'd first read up on Lizardmen before just dismissing them as one-dimensional. The same can be said of any Warhammer race really (they are blatant copypasta from Tolkien mythology after all).
If you want to focus on the 'free will' question, Slann and Skinks are your best bet. They have disagreements between eachother (as in Slann vs Slann, aside from the Prophet we don't know of any other real heresies that have occured, although it's perfectly possible if it happened once). It's also entirely possible to corrupt Skinks, they are sentient beings and are not immune to Chaos (Saurus are so single-minded and loyal it probably wouldn't be worth the effort). Just because GW hasn't been inventive in this field (two books which don't diverge from script much, a handful of references in others) doesn't mean you can't be.

Chaos Dwarves have almost no mentions in current Warhammer lore, but they definitely have character and pathos. Not really a valid argument IMO.

What's wrong with Slann? It would take a good writer (their thought processes are quite alien, so you'd have to think in the abstract to make it work), but Slann are quite independent beings. They debate the course of the future on a daily basis, and magical duels to the death over ideological differences are not unheard of.

Skinks would be substantially easier though I agree, their grasp of language is superior (Slann just tend to telepathically send ideas), and they are much more grounded in their thinking. Still pretty alien mindset though, they are the administrators of a defunct empire in ruins, and have a deep distrust of outsiders. Not to mention Slann have forbidden the presence of the lesser races in Lustria, so striking up a conversation would be problematic.

 

It is up to the author to create the atmosphere and interest in a story not the basic culture used as the framework for the story.

It isn't free will that creates interest in a story it is the conflict that results from exercising that free will. The differences in interpretation of the tablets of the Old Ones is an intrinsic source of conflict in Lizardmen culture. The differences between slann, saurus and skink would also produce friction while the affection between skinks and kroxigor could produce a change of pace. GW have also produced a lot of fluff about the interaction between Lizardmen culture and groups from other cultures. There is plenty of points of interest in Lizardmen society to populate a story, but that isn't the problem in producing a good Lizardmen centered story...

The problem is our need to relate to the personalities in the story, Lizardmen aren't like us so an accurate representation of a Lizardmen character will be hard for us humans to relate to. This is why most GW Lizardmen stories have had a human protagonist. Also with the telepathic communication of the slann it is hard to represent the debate from the perspective of a human observer.

In some ways I am happy that there isn't more Lizardmen literature as so much of the writing about elves is basicly humans with prosthetic pointy ears and good taste in haberdashery.

 

I disagree completely. Elves have terrible taste in haberdashery.

 

I've read Temple of the Serpent and the Army Book along with all the fluff in the BRB. I still think that because Lizardmen lack individuality you will never see a book about them in the way you do humans, dwarfs, or skaven.

Any story involving Lizardmen seems to require one of those other races and the story to be mainly written from their perspective. While the Army Book and the BRB have interesting tid bits of Lizardmen lore they read like a history book, not a novel.

The few chapters in Temple of the Serpent that had Lizardmen narratives were just about how they don't understand the other races and how foreign they are to them.

You CAN have Lizardmen fluff, I just think the majority, if not all of the story, needs to be from another race's perspective.

 

You can tell the story from the Lizardmen viewpoint if you have the skill. See Iain M Banks' Feersum Endjinn for an example of stories told from radically different viewpoints.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feersum_Endjinn