Discussion Warhammer Wild West as an alternative setting? Brainstorming

I looked and didn't find any Deadlands books, but I did see a nice detailed book called The Book of the American West sitting on top of the clearance shelf for three dollars. That's the Book gods telling me to keep running with this thought experiment!

So I guess it means I need to get my Derek and Brandon Fletcher on and write.

Part Two: Rewriting the Warhammer History

I would like to bring my Reverend Jacob and the other storytellers back but if they told THIS part, they would get mad at each other and a fist fight would break out before we got to the halfway point.


I am operating on the assumption that the Empire of Warhammer Fantasy grew to a much larger size than the canon Empire we are familiar with. Eventually the Empire of Man conquered almost the entire Old World Europe analog. Then it defeated Chaos more or less, but the losses in this victory were so great that the Empire of Man could never recover and broke apart into smaller nations.

These nations were Estalia, Tilea, Greater Norsca, Greater Kislev, Westland, New Ulthuan, the Goblin Lands, East Landlockia and West Landlockia (the latter two are not developed much because they never become colonial powers).

In the centuries that follow, the Old World nations with access to the sea race to see who colonize most of the New World. Eventually the colonies get sick of following the orders of distant monarchs and declare independence. The two dominant cultures in the Wild West are Kislev and Estalia and Kislev has the edge in numbers. Note that centuries before they became a colonial power, Kislev was a loyal province of the Empire, so Kislev is not that different from the Empire.

There are enclaves of other groups but these groups, while distinct must adapt to play nice with Estalian and/or Kislevite culture.

Do you want to read the giant block of text that explains how I decided that the Wild West would be dominated by Kislevites and Estalians?

Spoiler: If your answer is “No” don’t click this box

Okay, so let’s start with an Old World pretty much in line with the map in 8th edition Big Red Book.

Rise of the Empire of Man

The Empire takes Kislev
As far as I know, Karl Franz never married and he’s a handsome guy who needs an heir. Queen Katrin of Kislev is a beautiful woman who need an heir. Kislev repeatedly requires the armies of the Empire to rescue it from Chaos incursions. The Empire relies on Kislev being a barrier against Chaos. Karl Franz is a legendary warrior. Queen Katrin is a formidable sorceress. They really would make a great power couple. It just so happens that the Empire has ten provinces and twelve runefangs.

Maybe it was before or after Karl Franz, but at some point the Emperor of the Empire and Queen of Kislev marry. As a wedding present the queen of Kislev receives the Drakwald Runefang and their first born becomes the First Elector Count of Kislev.

In general the Kislevites are very happy to be part of the Empire.

The Empire takes Tilea
Tilea is a rich and diverse regions that is split between several feuding City-states. The Empire captures the city-states one by one. The Tileans do not think to unify until it’s too late. The wars are bloody but short as the Tilean cities usually surrender after fairly short sieges. To smooth over the transition, the emperor gives the most powerful TIlean noble family the Solland runefang. To placate that noble family’s Tilean rivals, two more noble families are brought into the fold. They don’t any official power really, but they do get to sit in on as electors much like the representative from the Moot.

In general the Tileans are moderately content to be a part of the Empire.

The Empire takes Brettonia
Brettonia is a unified nation with terrain that serves as a barrier to invaders along the Empire border. The Empire conquers Brettonia in a very bloody war that lasts at least ten years and a lot of the Brettonian nobleman are purged after the takeover.

In general, the Brettonians view the Empire as brutal oppressors.

The Empire takes the Borderlands
The Empire sends a modest army into the Borderlands. The Borderland princes are not morons. The Borderland princes agree to fly the banner of the Emperor above their own. They agree to pay the Empire of Man a modest tax. In exchange the Emperor gives the Borderland princes relative autonomy.

In general, the men of the Borderlands are mildly annoyed that they have to pay the Empire taxes when they provide next to nothing.

The Empire loses the Borderlands but gain so much more
The Warboss of the latest grand Waaaagh!!! Realizing that provoking the Empire of Man directly is suicide and basically butchers the Borderlands which the Empire doesn’t bother to defend. The Black Orc Warboss imposing a semblance of order on the region or what passes for order among greenskins.

Now the Dwarfs face a unified front from an orcish horde that is essentially unable to attack anywhere else and thus will not be distracted. In desperation, the Dwarfs basically agree to become a puppet state of the Empire of Man in return for protection and the combined armies drive the orcs back into the Borderlands.

The Empire takes Estalia

Before the first shot is fired, Estalia waves the white flag. Estalia is allowed to exist as an independent nation in exchange for a yearly tribute. Ulthuan follows suit but their tribute is much smaller and it is understood that the Empire of Man cannot get enough ships to make a serious go of assaulting Ulthuan, the High Elves just figure the token tribute is insurance against a two front war against Naggaroth and the Empire of Man at the same time.

The Empire cannot expand more
There is very little arable land in the Southlands to claim, and it’s far away. The Norse country is too close to the Chaos Wastes in order to hold for long, but a few foolhardy emperors attempt failed crusades to take these territories anyway. The Empire sets up forward bases and outposts in Norsca and the Southlands but they cannot really be said to control these places.

As a side note, the Vampire Counts of Sylvania are still around collectively decide to keep a low profile to avoid the Empire’s wrath.

Fall of the Empire of Man

The Empire of Man beats back the Chaos hordes, possibly forever, but their land is literally warped and at best one in ten people survive the Chaos War and its aftermath. That’s not enough men to support a massive imperial beuarcracy. To make matters more difficult the emperor and a lot of the electors died making succession messy.

Brettonia rebels almost immediately and even seize the Port of Marienberg. This prompts Estalia to stop sending the Empire tribute. Most of the devastated provinces of the Empire secede and become independent kingdoms.

The vampires of Sylvania try to make their move to use all the massive amounts of dead from the Demon Wars to raise an army and reform the Empire of Man as the Empire of the Dead, but there is a major problem. Magic is beginning to weaken. There are plenty of corpses to convert into soldiers but not enough magical energy to awaken more than a fraction of the dead. The initial vampire aggressions are repulsed and the remaining vampires start fighting amongst themselves as magic remains scarce. Those vampires that are not destroyed scatter though out all the emerging human nations and resume quiet lives where they pretend to be normal humans and hide the bodies of their victims very carefully.

What once was a solid block of land is now jagged and separated as the ocean cuts across the lands of the Old world created new coastline. Middenland is now a coastal province. Nordland is now half the size and is connected to the rest of the old Empire by a fairly narrow Isthmus. Ostland also lost land and gained coastline.

The land of Norsca, once in the thrall of Chaos are freed from it, at least temporarily. They ally with the new independent kingdoms of Nordland and eventually merge. They take the name Greater Norsca because I believe Norsca is a cooler name than Nordland. Together they become the dominant sea power. With their longships an superior seamanship they are able to launch surprise hit and run raids against Brettonia, Estalia, Ostland, and the elves with relative impunity. Eventually the Nords stop going a-Viking. Once the population of the southern provinces rebounded from the Chaos war, they were able to build a series of strong fortifications to keep the raiders at bay. They had more arable land, so they could field larger army reserves. Also, missionaries from the Imperial Church of Sigmar were able to convert a lot of the Chaos and Maan worshipping holdouts among the northerners and tame their lust for conquest somewhat.

South of Greater Norsca, Middland, once landlocked, now is not landlocked. Middland eventually merges with its closest neighbors including parts of what was Hocland, and Reikland. This new coastal nation is called Westland.

Ostland and Kislev merge into one kingdom, called Kislev because that is a cooler sounding name than Ostland. Ostland backed Kislev against the Orcs and Goblins and Kislev backed Ostland against the Norse raiders.

Tilea declares independence and forms a unified kingdom, but by this point their populations have almost entirely converted to the Imperial Church of Sigmar, so relations between Tilea and the southern breakaway nations from the Empire of Man are peaceful.

Two more nations coalesce out of the disintegrating Empire of Man. The nations of East Landlockia (encompassing most of Tablaecland and Ostermark) and West Landlockia (incorporating most of Averland, Wissenland, Stirland, and the Moot). Since they have no ocean access, they are not really important.

And the Elves

During the Great Chaos War, Chaos forms predominantly led by Slaaneshi forces simultaneously assault Ulthuan, Naggaroth, and Loren. All three nations drive off their attackers at great cost.

After the Great Chaos War, Khorne’s Curse weakens the power of all mortal wizards. Both Malekith and his mother Morathi, the twin rulers of Naggaroth, have relied on constant use of magic to keep the Grim Reaper at bay. They die shortly after the Great Chaos War. Both Malekith and Morathi encouraged their underlings to feud amongst themselves in order to prevent a large scale organized coup. With no clear successor to Malekith, the noble families of Naggaroth tore themselves apart.

Khorne's Curse also weakened the magic that prevented Ulthuan from sinking into the sea, but it was sinking on a slow enough timescale that the High Elves were able to make an orderly evacuation saving nearly all of their people and a good portion of their wealth. The High Elves sailed to Naggaroth and conquered their former rivals fairly easily. They re-named Naggaroth New Ulthuan.

Conquering Naggaroth was easy, but holding it was not. There were several deep schisms. Obviously the descendants of the Dark Elves and the descendants of the High Elves resented each other. Both the High Elves and the Dark Elves valued the Temple of Assurayan but sadly the temple of Assurayan was now underwater. A second schism arose between those who wanted to restore the tradition of the Phoenix Emperor and reformers who wanted to create a new system. Eventually the reformers won and divisions between former Dark Elves and former High Elves lessened over successive generations. New Ulthuan was ruled by a hereditary king. No longer did a magic ritual determine who ruled.

When Brettonia seceded from the Empire of Man, the Wood Elves saw this as the opportunity to drive both the Brettonia and the Empire away from their beloved forest. This made the Wood Elves hated by all the local humans. Then they had to face an attack by Orcs and Goblins.

Beset on all sides, and still reeling from the Chaos war, most Wood Elves only had three options. Merge with the spirits of the forest and cease to be elves or seek refuge in New Ulthuan and cease to be a part of the forests. Or they could die. Most died.


So who do have can settle the New World?

Greater Norsca: This nation is made up of what’s left of the Norsca combined with what’s left of the former Empire province of Nordland.

Kislev: Kislev now controls all of what was original Kislev and most of the former Empire province of Ostland. Maybe a little bit of expansion eastward into lands formerly controlled by Chaos friendly tribes.

Estalia: Once a puppet state of the Empire of Man, Estalia is now fully independent and looks exactly like it did during the Warhammer World That Was. Well not exactly, maybe about 15% of its land sank into the sea.

Tilea: Once outright conquered by the Empire of Man, Tilea is now fully independent and looks almost exactly like it did in the Warhammer World That Was. Minus about 5% of the land falling the sea.

Westland: This is made up of the Empire’s former southwest corner. Once landlocked, the terraforming that followed the Demon Wars now gives them reason sea access.

New Ulthuan: After the dust settles, Naggaroth remains almost the sole home of all living elves. Since most of the new rulers hail from Ulthuan, they renamed the land New Ulthuan.

The Goblin Lands: The land that used to be the Border Princes has a lot of coastline, so the Orcs and Goblins can sail to the New World without a lot of fuss.


Who wins the race to grab as much of the New World as possible? Kislev wins. Estalian takes a close second. Greater Norsca and the Goblin Lands fight it out for third. There are lot more Goblins in the New World than Norsemen, but the Norsemen in the New World are a unified block and the greenskins are not.

The other groups do make it to the New World, but they are so isolated that they either set up isolated trading posts or they are force to bend the knee to one of the main powers.


New Ulthuan had a good head start since they are pretty much adjacent to the New World, but it takes them well over two centuries to stabilize as the former Dark Elves and High Elves have to get used to the fact that their former worst enemies are now their countrymen, so their head start vanishes and then some. They also replenish their numbers slower than humans. Some elves can visit and trade with the New World, but large scale colonization is out of the question.

Greater Norsca has the strongest seafaring culture of all the newly emerged human nations. Their explorers are the first to map the New World and they are the first to set up colonies. Unfortunately, all the native people and the supernatural monster threats have no one else to fight with, so most of the early Norse colonies fail. The Norse cannot keep up a sustained effort at mass colonization because their base population is small relative to the other human nations.

Estalian has a seafaring tradition second only to Norsca. They have a greater population to draw on. For almost the entirety of recorded history, their demographics were unchanged, so they were not slowed down by political instability. They are the first Old World power to make major inroads into the New World.

Brettonia could have given Estalia a run for their money, but they had a problem. They were really happy to throw off their Empire oppressors and reclaim independence, but internal dissentions were great. Traditional Brettonian culture has utter contempt for their peasantry. After centuries of enjoying the relatively decent treatment they received under the Empire of Man, the Brettonian lower classes overthrew their nobility and created a Republic. Not having a lot of strong leaders, the Republic failed, only to be replaced by a new monarchy that looked a lot like the various breakaway states from the Empire. By the time the dust settled, all the other naval powers had a good head start on the Brettonians when it came to establishing overseas colonies.

Tilea was now more unified than it had ever been, but they were the only naval power that was bordering the Goblin Lands. That means their navy had to focus on defending their coast from greenskin pirates. They couldn’t afford to send massive expeditions out west.

The greenskins of the Old World Goblin Lands are not especially interested in colonizing the New World. They don’t have the mental discipline to make an organized colonization, but they are brave and foolhardy enough to make unorganized colonization attempts. A few of the New World greenskin enclaves survive if not thrive and because greenskins reproduce very quickly once they get in the New World, they are very hard to dislodge.

Westland used to be landlocked, now they weren’t. They did not have a preexisting naval tradition so they had to build one up from scratch. Their coastline used to be dry land, so most of their waters were pretty shallow and difficult for all but the most experienced sailors to manage. By the time they had a large number of experienced sailors, most of the New World was settled. But Westland does have a very large population. A lot of Westlanders chose to immigrate to the New World, but they had to find a place in other nations’ colonies. Kislev had the most similar language and culture both being cultural heirs to the Empire of Man. In fact the wave of Westland immigrants eventually paved the way for a trickle of immigrants from West Landlockia to follow in their footsteps.

Kislev emerged as the first early rival to Estalian dominance of the New World. Once the Kislevite colonies swelled with Westland immigrants, the Kislevite colonies had the human fodder they needed to hold the decisive advantage in any New World War with the Estalians.

I don’t have the details pegged down yet, but I figure just like in the real world, most of the New World colonies would grow tired of answering to monarchies thousands of miles away and declare independence but maintain most of the cultural values of their parent countries.

Most of the Wild West cultural will be dominated by Kislevites and Estalians. For ease of categorization, the Estalian dominated areas would look a lot like Latin America and the Kislevite dominated areas would look a lot like Anglo America. The other nations have some New World colonies, but most of their holdings are coastal and in the east such as a Brettonian colony that looks a lot like Quebec; they didn’t push out west, at least not officially.

Sigmar worship would be the predominant religion of both the two main cultural groups though I’m sure the two groups can bicker and argue about minor points of dogma till the cows come home. I’m not opposed to coming up with a new religion, but I don’t have any ideas and Sigmar worship keeps things simple.

I am not sure if the Warhammer setting would be conducive to a functioning Republic, but you know, screw realism! If the New World is ruled by competing monarchies it’s all “For the king!” this and “For the king!” that. I want western style enlightened self-interest being the primary motivator.

Of course the Wild West is wild. Large parts are the stomping grounds of orcs and goblins. Some parts are still effectively controlled by indigenous people such as the Lizardmen or Saurios as they are now called. Some parts are empty apart from the occasional monster.

The next step in building the backstory is put more details in the greater historical events that shaped the West.

Who or what were the conquistador allegory group? Who or what did they conquer? What were the lasting effects?

What form of governments do the former colonial nations that ostensibly control the Wild West look like?

Was their a gold rush or similar hunt for a resource? Was their an Oregon trail or a similar quest for land?

Who fought the Civil War. Who fought whom and why? What were the lasting effects.

Who was/is a slave and why? Where are they now?

What is the state of steam power in general, railroads in particular.

Also, figure out a rough draft for the roster of races and factions.

 

Setting Backstory Part Three, the Dark Stuff

The greatest story never told…

Every race and group has segments of revisionist historians that claim that their ancestors, their countrymen are the ones that truly defeated the daemon lords. There are more conflicting stories about the destruction of Tzeentch than there are stories about the other three Chaos gods combined.

There are dozens of stories of Tzeentch being brought down by a hero, but they are all lies.

Tzeentch was actually destroyed by a villain.
(did I just blow your mind? No I guess that is par for the course for Warhammer)

As the Empire of Man and its allies fought against the unending waves of daemons, Nagash made his move. Nagash’s intention was to marshal his forces in Nehekhara and wait for the armies of the living and the armies of Chaos to fight it out and take out the weakened winner, but Tzeentch came to Nehekhara first.

Both Tzeentch and Nagash basically shouted battle cries along the lines of “No one destroys this world but me!” and threw down.

It’s unclear if either side “won” the fight. Who wins when you have mutual destruction? Maybe Nagash sought to destroy everything rather than let Tzeentch win. Maybe Tzeentch sought to destroy everything rather than let Nagash win. Either way the fallout wiped out of their epic duel blighted the Southlands, possibly for all time.

All or at least most of the Tomb Kings were rendered inert. No longer undead, they were now simply dead. Their skeletons turned to dust. All the living in Araby were instantly slain. All the soldiers in the Empire's southern outpost were slain. The Lizardmen of the Southlands were slain. Most of the animals in the Southlands were slain. Much of the plant life was destroyed. The Southlands became the Deadlands and no one in the Old World knew why because there was no alive to tell the story. There wasn’t even any undead creatures to tell the story.

In theory, someone could travel to the Southlands and grab all the treasure from the Tomb Kings and Southlands Lizardmen and no one would raise a bony finger to stop them. Good luck finding the treasure under a giant mountain of sand. No one knows which of the two million piles of sand they should try digging in.

Without 21st century era satellite imaging technology you aren’t going to find the treaure unless you start digging in a random sand dune and are absurdly lucky. Sure, you don’t have to worry about undead trying to kill you, but there is virtually no accessible food or water in the Deadlands, so the Deadlands does not require skeleton archers to defend their treasures.

So this is my excuse for “The Southlands? Don’t worry about it!”


So what Does this Mean for Chaos?

Here is what I came up with a day’s brainstorming. I haven't made up my mind which idea I like best, and I'm certainly open to other people's suggestion.

Spoiler: Tzeentch Reborn

Tzeentch survives his fight with Nagash, barely. Tzeentch didn’t dare go north because the alliance led by the Empire of Man had already destroyed or banished the other Chaos gods and were ruthlessly hunting the smallest pockets of Chaos activity. Tzeentch went west across the World Pond.

After reaching Lustria, the much weakened Tzeentch gets in a fight with one of the last living Slann. It just so happens that this surviving Slann was not as noble as his brethren. Most Slann accepted that magic was waning and that they would fade into obscurity, but this last Slann was desperate to retain it’s magic by any means necessary

After a long epic flight, Tzeentch either tries to possess the Slann or the Slann tries to consume Tzeentch. This creates a new entity with a hybrid personality between the Slann and Tzeentch. After recuperating from the battle and merging personality, Tzeentch and the Slann rise again after 1000 years of recuperation taking a new name. It just so happens that this entity chose the isolation of the Wild West to do its recuperating in. Newly arisen, it begins carefully gathering resources and followers to fuel its eventual ascension to world domination.

Spoiler: Here Comes a New Player!

Tzeentch was destroyed. Nurgle was destroyed. Khorne was destroyed. Slaanesh was destroyed. Not necessarily in that order

The Realm of Chaos was not destroyed. Their daemon minions were not destroyed. Without their masters, the lesser daemons of Chaos had a free-for-all, determined to establish a new pecking order. The civilized world has at least a few centuries reprieve from Chaos incursions then suddenly a new player (or several new players emerge).

Maybe an old school canon character like Malekith or Mazdamundi dies and ends up in the Chaos Realm and joins the epic free-for-all for control of the Chaos Realm (though if an established character wins this fight, he/she/they should take new names. In this case the new Chaos gods would be probably less evil but a lot more organized and methodical.

Maybe Hashut or the Horned Rat manage to usurp a promotion for themselves in the Chaos Realm. Maybe Gork and Mork, Sotek, and/or Khaine manage to re-invent themselves as Lords of Chaos. A version of Gork reborn would be a random destroyer. Hashut reborn would be a brutal avatar of slavery and oppression. The Horned Rat reborn would probably represent the dark side of Progress. A reborn Khaine would probably just revel in death. Sotek reborn could represent cannibalism and demand constant sacrifices. This only scratches the surface of Warhammer gods.

Maybe some no-name daemon claws its way to the top of the pack.

Whoever becomes the new Demon Lord(s), they will have different powers, personalities and goals from the previous four.


If we want to have four Daemon Lords again, we could base them on the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: War/Strife, Famine, Pestilence and Death.

Maybe there could be one Chaos lord for the four cardinal directions. Obviously, Warhammer Wild West would have the main antagonist being the Chaos god of the West. The other three Chaos gods wouldn’t even need to be developed much. A Wild West themed Demon Lord would probably represent the harsh elements of life in the west. Parching heat, freezing cold, hunger, thirst. Maybe it could even embody racism and the dark side of Manifest Destiny.

Spoiler: Sealed Evil in a Can

TV Tropes, I choose you! Throws pokeball. Staple Trope for Fantasy there.

Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh were NOT destroyed, but they have negligible ability to work their evil on the world. They are imprisoned. They might be imprisoned in one place, or there could be four separate prisons.

There is probably at least one cult that is planning to free their masters to gain untold power, you know, like you do. It could be as simple as, “Find Pandora’s Box and then open it,” or it can be as complicated as “Find the 13 hidden Stones of Despair, line them up specifically on the night of an eclipse and perform this specific fourteen hour profane chant.”

For narrative purposes, obviously these sealed cans of evil all happen to be hidden in the Wild West of course….

Spoiler: Red Herring didn’t do it after all!

Chaos with a capital “C” is dead and it’s never coming back. That doesn’t mean the world has no “chaos” with a small “c.” That certainly doesn’t mean that there is no evil in the world.

After I badmouthed Rian Johnson for “subverting expectations” by discarding fundamental aspects of the Star Wars mythos, would I not be a hypocrite for discarding a fundamental aspect of the Warhammer? Maybe.

But the memory of Chaos remains. Even a thousand years after the last Chaos god dies, the legacy of Chaos lives on. Everyone with half a brain is afraid of Chaos coming back. Imagine if thousands of heretics are brutally executed every year for fear of their Chaos taint. These inquisitors believe they are doing good works, but you the reader are aware that these deaths are literally for nothing.

You can still have Chaos cultist that believe that the Chaos gods can be resurrected or perhaps they can ascend to become the new Chaos gods. These cultists will probably commit countless atrocities in pursuit of their goals. They believe they are doing good works, but you the reader are aware that these atrocities are literally for nothing.

Both cases are still pretty dark. I would state that if we decide to write Chaos out of this setting, we need a replacement force for the Bigger Bad.

The most obvious substitute Bigger Bads could include some kind of necromantic force. A less obvious Bigger Bad would be the ghost of a vengeful Slann, I’ll cover that more later, I promise.


But what about overarching themes. Warhammer Fantasy was loosely based on the medieval idea that Order is intrinsically good and Chaos is intrinsically bad. In modern times (basically since the first World War and the rise of authoritarian regimes) we have the notion that excessive Order can be just as horrible an evil as unchecked. Chaos. When "Chaos" is good we call it "Liberty" or "Freedom".

What are the backdrops to the Wild West? You watch any Western movie and there is likely to be at least lip service paid to the notion that cowboys or frontiersmen in general live a hard life, but they live a free life. Even in the twenty-first century, inhabitants of the western states are likely to value their freedom. More often than the rest of the country they will tell you they want the government to get off their backs and give them liberty.

The American Civil War has the evil order of slavery versus the good liberty of freedom. From a certain point of view, the “War of Northern Aggression” violated the liberty of freedom for white people in the South. Certainly there is justified resentment about General Sherman’s march to the sea.

In addition to the naked greed and callousness that displaced and killed many Native Americans, on some level this represents an oppressive order of assimilation and Manifest Destiny versus the liberty of the tribes that existed before hand. Before that you had Americans imposing their oppressive order on the Mexicans in the land they took. Before that, the Spanish conquistadors and some of the harsher missionaries imposed a sort of oppressive Order on the people they conquered. Before that the Aztecs imposed a sort of oppressive Order on the people they conquered.

So if we wanted to make Order bad and Liberty good, there is plenty of material to use for inspiration.

That would be a radically different direction for Warhammer. In Warhammer 40K, the governments of most/all governments are extremely oppressive but the forces of Chaos are so bad that this stultifying oppression is justified.

My final thought is that if the setting does not have Chaos, it shouldn’t lack Chaos just to be cute. Every narrative detail of the setting needs to reinforce how oppressive Order is. Maybe reinvent Khaine the elven god of slaughter into Khaine the elf Führer or Dear Leader. Sigmar would probably need a dark makeover. The Old Ones maybe could use a dark makeover. In such a setting, Gork and Mork would be the heroic but misguided freedom fighters.
(Have I blown your mahrlect mind? Good.)


Perhaps after the Chaos gods died, the once beleaguered gods of Order absorbed their power and took over the Chaos realm and remade it in their own image. Such a realm might look like the darker versions of the the mythical realm of Hades Only a tiny number of mortals meet the gods’ favor and make it to Elysium. The rest are living cogs in their terrible eternal machines.

Scalenex will probably not support a setting without zombies in it…


I don’t want to just say “Oh, and the setting also has undead in it!” That narrative route is good enough for orcs and goblins, but it's not good enough for undead. I need to explain how and why the undead are here.

Note, the undead would probably not have the same power set and limitations as Warhammer Fantasy undead. I set an in-universe rule that magic is weaker than it used to be. That means necromancers would probably not be able to field ever-growing armies of thousands of zombies. Without the option of infinite undead hordes, necromancers would probably have to adapt a strategy of quality over quantity. Undead creatures could not rely on magical energy alone to sustain themselves. They would need to either feed on the living, tap into the power of nature, or psychically feed on suffering.

Spoiler: The Traditional Route

Nagash gets an entire book in the End Time series, he doesn’t warrant a place in this setting. I would prefer to have very few named characters from classic Warhammer as possible.

One of my favorite parts of the Tolkien’s Silmarillion is that Sauron was a relative lightweight. He was a lieutenant to the Big Bad that made a name for himself later. I like the idea of making Arkhan the Black the new undead Big Bad. It provides a tie-in to the World that Was but Arkhan was relatively obscure enough that it communicates “hey, this is a new setting, not a rehash of the old.” Arkhan is not Starscream (who plots a coup whenever Megatron stubs his toe). Arkhan would never take the top job if there was even a tiny chance Nagash was coming back. Arkhan is inhuman and remote enough that he can fit the same narrative role as Nagash without all the stench of Nagash's villain decay.

Arkhan is either dwelling in the Wild West because he doesn’t feel that he has enough power to challenge the more populous and organized nations of the Old World or because the Wild West holds some source of mystic power he wants to tap.

Spoiler: ”Character Driven Route”

Arkhan would represent a super powerful remote and distant Big Bad. What if we used a smaller scale character, more Vader than Palpatine? I had a lot of fun writing stories based around Lord Renliss and Grand Commodore Luther Harkon. These are not just vampires, they are unique vampires with their own goals and quirks.

For a character driven story, we would probably want to create a new character. For now we’ll go with @Y'ttar Scaletail's suggestion and call him Doc Bones. Doc Bones could be a vampire. Doc Bones could be a necromancer, or he could be a free willed non-blood drinking undead creature similar to the Night King from Game of Thones, though I would make him made of dust rather than ice.

The first requirement is that Doc Bones is not just another undead menace, but that he (or she) has well defined and well understood goals. I guess that applies for almost any character.

The second requirement is that Doc Bones take a form that is very indicative of the New World. He is not an Old World vampire, he is not a generic vampire. He or she is an New World vampire.

Maybe Doc Bones is a southern dandy, or a carpetbagger Yankee. Maybe Doc Bones is a voudoun mystic from the Caribbean. After all the very word “zombie” comes from Caribbean folkore. More likely, Doc Bones wears a cowboy hat and packs a six-shooter and spouts great Western style quotes like “I’m your Huckleberry” before unleashing necromantic spells.

Perhaps Madame Bones runs most of the setting’s brothels to lure in living victims who would never be missed. Prostitution is an adult topic, yes, but it’s an undeniable fact that sex workers defined much of what we think of the historical and fictionalized versions of the old West. It has to be included somewhere for verisimilitude though maybe making the madams vampires is a bit too Victorian “Beware wild and predatory women!”

I did google "Wild West slang terms" for writing my narrative portion and there are LOTS of slang terms related to prostitution.

An offshoot of this is that there are probably a bunch of vampires in the Old World, but who cares. Doc Bones is the only one that counts in the West. If someone destroys Doc Bones, then the undead cease to be a threat in Warhammer Wild West though the possibility remains that a replacement can come from back east if needed.

Spoiler: ”Lord Kroak, how could you?”

Nagash survives his fight with Tzeentch, barely. Nagash didn’t dare go north because the alliance led by the Empire of Man has the power to destroy him forever. Nagash went west across the World Pond.

After reaching Lustria, the much weakened Nagash gets in a fight with one of the last living Slann. It just so happens that this surviving Slann was not as noble as his brethren. Most Slann accepted that their time to die has come, but this Slann very much wants to stay on the earthly plane by any means necessary.

Because I do not like Nagash, the Slann wins the fights and steals his power. Alternatively, maybe Nagash isn’t involved at all. A desperate Slann just thought. "Hey, I cannot use the spawning pools anymore, and my mind isn’t strong enough to dream solid Seraphon into existence. Maybe I can use necromancy to support my new career as an evil overlord?"

The undead minions could still be mostly human, but because they are ultimately controlled by a corrupt Slann, they would be alien and hard to relate to. Worst case scenario, the alien-ness makes the undead un-relateable. Best case scenario, the alien-ness makes the undead more mysterious and scary.

Spoiler: ”Zombie Chaos Warriors!”

In the previous section I covered a lot of possibilities for a Wild West Chaos possibilities. It could be the case that whatever new form Chaos takes relies on necromancy to survive. What if say the new Chaos power on the block has to drain the life force of mortals to sustain itself and uses undead minions.

A little hand-wavy for me, but I can see some appeal. Not every aspect of the setting needs a college thesis paper to explain it.

My thoughts for Chaos undead would be creatures akin to Frankenstein's monster. That's a very 19th century type of undead monster that could be adapted to the Wild West with minimal work

Spoiler: ”Kitchen Sink Method”

Arkhan the Black lost his original body and was forced to possess the body of a corrupt Slann. Arkhan is too busy to micromanage his evil schemes in the Wild West, so he took his new minion Doc Bones and told him “Go grab this magical McGuffin out in the Wild West, so I can use it for my world domination plan! Also, something-something Chaos. Now, I’m going to take a nap for 500 years because that’s what both Nagash and a Slann would do.”

Well that's it for this part. Next up, whatever I feel like writing. Until next time...

 

I'd be open to maps, but we would need to come to a consensus (or follow Scalenex's ideas by fiat) for what all needs to be included. I'd certainly encourage like bombing any post with a well drawn map on it. Scolenex and I rarely agree on what we like, but I'm pretty sure he would also "like" it.

Agreed, but I don't want everything to follow real world history too closely. Believe it or not, I don't post everything I write for the forum. My first draft for the history of the New World colonies showed my cultural bias pretty strongly. An unfortunate side effect of living in the greatest country that ever was and ever will be. I figured something more culturally neutral was more appropriate.

I also drifted onto a big tangent in the how the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment ultimately paved the way for democracy in America and the world. My issue was that the Warhammer setting may be so grim, that the idea of them having an Age of Enlightenment is almost laughable, but I opted not to post my random speculations.

But if we decide the Estalians are the conquistadors we need to figure out the details of who, what, and how they conquisted.

I don't have a problem making Hammerica Quebec a Brettonian colony. I guess I already gave Brettonia a revolution that is not similar to the French Revolution at least superficially.

I don't have a problem with making lands suspiciously similar to Mexico and Florida former Estalian holdings and the rest to a very British-like Greater Kislev.

So Estalia and Greater Kislev settled most of the colonies but a big wave of immigration from Westland, East Landlockia and West Landlockia swelled the numbers of the former Kislevian colonies. In this extended metaphor, this wave of immigrants kind of matches the German, Irish, and Italians who came over to the United States.


But there needs to be exceptions. For instance in the real world the Anglo Americans were predominantly Protestant and the Iberian Americans were primarily Roman Catholic. My analog to the Roman Catholic Church is the Imperial Church of Sigmar. In this case Greater Kislev would be staunchly supportive of the Imperial Church having been under the thumb of that religion for well over a thousand years and Estalians would logically less accepting of it, having been forced to covert to it and only reluctantly serving that Church for a few centuries.

I tried to come to this conclusion logically. I didn't just pull a Rian Johnson and say "What if the Spaniards were Protestants? Subverting expecations y'all!"

I respectfully disagree. Just because Kislev is famously cold does not mean that Kislevites will only choose to settle in areas that happen to be cold. It might be an inside joke among New World and Old World Kislevites that they make fun of the other group for having their temperament and demeanor ruined by the weather.

Portugal's main colonial legacy is Brazil, and Brazil is not very similar to Portugal climate-wise. Along a similar line, Quebec and France are not very similar climate-wise either.

I figured we start with a more cowboy focused Wild West setting. If the fluff franchise took off then we could have spinoffs for new but related settings in California, the Yukon, and Quebec. I even thought about going back a century or two and having a spin off in the Caribbean as the Old World Naval powers fight a proxy war through piracy. We can call it, "Warhammer of the Caribean"...or something less silly.

 

I had this ready, and I was planning on sitting on till more comments came in but the first line was literally "What about the Lizards"

But What About Lizards?

Oh yeah, this is Lustria-Online. I should probably cover this before people abandon this thread.

To distinguish Wild West lizards from official canon Lizardmen and Seraphon, we are going to call the Wild West lizards Rangos though the official name will probably be “El Saurios”.

So the first thing is that we do not have to keep the official canon about Lizardmen though we shouldn’t toss out established parts of Lizardmen lore just to be different.

For instance, I do not think the Rangos should have their own Chameleon Skinks. Give a Chameleon Skink a firearm and set him loose in a sparsely populated frontier, and you can bring a township to its knees with only one such Skink. Too OP.

But speaking of OP characters, let us talk of Slann. Warhammer Fantasy and especially Age of Sigmar, the Slann ARE the Lizardmen/Seraphon. What are our options?

Spoiler: ”The Slann are Mighty”

Even with magic weakening around the world, the Slann are still way more powerful than any warmblood wizard could hope to be. If Slann are proportionately weakened along with the lesser wizards, they cannot summon legendary hurricanes with a snap of their fingers, but they can certainly obliterate any small Western township with no effort.

I don’t like this. In this case the Rangos would the dominant power in the Wild West to the point where the other factions wouldn’t be able to get a foothold.

Spoiler: ”The Slann are Weak”

Either there are very few Slann left or the there are many Slann but they are basically nerfed to less than 1% of their former grandeur. The Slann are still worshipped and obeyed by their minions, but they cannot do much, but they are able to maintain cultural cohesion.

The Rangos probably still have at least slightly better magic than the warmbloods. They probably have a technological disadvantage, but on the plus side, the Rangos are perfectly capable of acting with perfect cohesion, something no warmblood faction can boast. The Rangos would probably be at least as capable of asserting themselves as any other third party faction in the Wild West.

Spoiler: ”The Slann are Dead”

Maybe they died in the Chaos War. Maybe they were weakened by the Chaos War and Estalian Conquistadors managed to kill the last two or three. Maybe when the Curse of Khorne weakened the power of magic globally, the Slann’s seemingly immortal life spans gave out and they died of natural causes.

The Skink priests could fill the leadership vacuum for the Rangos adequately but not perfectly. The Skinks would not be sure of how to follow the Great Plan without the Slann. Should they even try? The Rangos might devolve into factionalism, but it would be mild factionalism. They are still united in purpose, they just disagree on tactics.

They might be more willing to assimilate into the human dominated world, but this assimilation will probably begin and end with trying to figure out to use firearms. Any innovation not directly related to their own survival will probably be discarded as a corrupt warmblood practice.

Even if the Skinks leaders are organized, the Rangos will probably be gripped by horrible melancholy. I imagine these Rangos would be a lot like the Na’Vi in Avatar. They are noble and pure on all that but they can do little more than cry and wail when the evil white men come to destroy their sacred tree.

Spoiler: ”The Slann never existed”

Maybe the Old Ones trusted the Skinks to manage the Great Plan, so they never made Slann. Maybe there used to be Slann aroud, but they died well before the Old Worlders set their sights on colonizing the New World. In this the death of the Slann woud be seen as a bad thing, but the pain would no longer bleed like a fresh wound.

First off, the Rangos are probably not a unified bloc in this scenario. These groups are probably not going to try to kill each other, but cooperation would be difficult to achieve in all but the most extreme circumstances.

But the Slann-less Rangos have an advantage the Rangos in the other scenarios lack. They would be less impaired by hidebound traditionalism. The Rangos would start out technologically behind the warmbloods but they would not stay that way for long. They would learn to use firearms, ride horses, keep cattle, and speak the human tongues to negotiate with them directly as quickly as possible.

If you want a Skink gun slinger acting as sheriff in a human dominated town, this is probably the best scenario to choose.

Spoiler: ”The Slann were corrupted”

I already mentioned one scenario where a Slann becomes an avatar of Chaos and another where a Slann becomes heir to Nagash’s legacy.

A fallen Slann does not have to be as dramatic as a Slann becoming the most powerful evil being on Earth. The Slann could go mad. Or they could just get angry. “There is no way to salvage the Great Plan now. Now it’s time to make warmbloods pay!”

Regardless of in what way the surviving Slann is/are corrupted, they are probably going to be very hostile to the various warmblood factions.

In this case the Rangos would not be noble Native Americans. They would be savage Injuns from 1960s western movies.

Instead of making all the Rangos the pawns of a corrupted Slann, maybe there is one faction that serves their corrupt master(s) and another that sticks to the Old Ones true path as they understand it. That’s going to be rough if the Rangos have to fight the warmbloods and each other. The “good guy” Rangos are in for a rough time because it would be easy for their corrupt brethren to launch a raid on a warmblood township, then frame the good guys for it.

The silver lining is that desperate times call for desperate measures. Both factions would be highly motivated to adopt new innovations so they would probably assimilate innovations from the warmbloods quickly and both sides would be very organized and disciplined.

Mazdamundi’s Revenge

There is a legend that when the Spanish Conquistadors killed King Montezuma cursed them all with his dying breath. Now a lot of people joke that the prevalence of dysentery was Montezuma’s curse. Ha ha, diarrhea is so funny….

But there are legends of more serious curses. The most well-known recent example is from the very first Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl movie. The pirate villains were turned into long suffering undying monsters because they stole some cursed gold.

So in this setting I am presuming that at some point after the Great Chaos war in the Old War and some point before the settling of the Hammerican West, Conquistadors (presumably from Estalia) sailed in and killed a lot of Lizardmen and stole their treasures.

It doesn’t have to be Estalian Conquistadors, but at some point a group of warmbloods committed a grievous crime against one or more Slann who in retaliation unleashed a curse now known as “Mazdamundi’s Revenge.”


Actually I guess I just really like curses. Khorne unleashed a curse on the world. Nurgle released a curse on the world. Tzeentch presumably left a curse on someone. I pondered having King Settra, Nagash, Mannfred Von Carstein, Morathi, Malekith, the Arch Lector of Sigmar, the Lady of the Lake, and all sorts of folk also leave a curse.

I’m not opposed to the idea of having so many curses flying around that it becomes an inside joke for the setting. But “Mazdamundi’s Revenge” resonates too much with North American folklore to not use.

Curses can be mild or severe. They can follow a group of individuals (or one very unlucky person). They can center around a McGuffin (like the cursed gold in Pirates of the Caribbean) or they center around a place. The following list of curses do not have to all be attributed to Mazdamundi.


Cursed Places
-A rich area of minerals no one dares mine because of all the accidents.
-A haunted house. A haunted cave. Basically a haunted anything.
-Nothing will grow here again save thorns.
-All babies delivered in this valley miscarry.
-This area is a beacon that attracts monsters, either supernatural monsters or it simply draws in evil men.

Cursed Individuals
-Physical manifestations. They are undead, ugly mutants.
-Endless drives. Always wandering, never resting. Always hungry.
-Perverse urges. Cannibalism is the go-to, I will steer clear of the sexual perversions. A man turns to cannibalism once and is force to be a cannibal forever. A lot of monsters stories are based on this.

Cursed Legacies
-Curse you! Your children! And your children’s children!
-Curse all the self-righteous priests of Sigmar!
-Curse all these foul Brettonians!

Global or Regional Curses
-Winters are extra cold and harsh. Summers are extra hot.
-Predators are especially fierce
-The foliage is especially deadly (8th edition Lizardmen book actually had this for Lustria)
-Skaven/Chaos/Undead/Something else cause a famine in a large region of the Old World forces mass migration to the New World
-All Dwarf rune magic fails
-Elves lose their extended life span
-Magical miscasts become more severe
-Magic becomes weaker


Cursed McGuffins
-Weapon that grants success in battle but dooms wielder to ignominious death by betrayal, or some kind of wasting disease.
-Tool that performs miracles but shortens one’s lifespan to a single year.
-Cursed treasure that inflicts hardships on those who try to spend it.

That’s just scratching the surface.


Should We Include Seraphon?

I have predicted @NIGHTBRINGER 's answer here.

I understand the notion that some would want to keep the West pure and not taint it with material from the Age of Copyright, but hear me out.

So I was pondering Wild West undead and I thought back to my wonderful Summers serving as a camp counselor in New Mexico. Philmont Scout Ranch which was just a few miles from Cimarron, New Mexico. Cimarron was an important stop for wagon trains out west and the Saint Jame’s Hotel acts as a sort of tiny Old West museum, supposedly haunted.

The scary Wild West inspired campfire stories I remember usually do not involve big hairy monsters that like to feast on human flesh. They involve vengeful spirits.

Putting two and two together. The Seraphon would be vengeful spirits manifesting from the stars to wreck vengeance on the warmbloods who slaughtered their people.

If the goal is seamlessly merge Warhammer lore and Wild West lore, I am hard pressed to come up with a more perfect fusion than this.

We just need to figure out how often the Seraphon manifest, how powerful they are, and how much care they put into picking targets or it they just start wailing on the first mortal they see. Another option would be there are no Seraphon but the Rangos are hoping that if they complete a specific quest or regain the Old One’s favor they can make this Ghost Dino Dance come to pass. My vote would be to drive home the star connection by having Seraphon ride forth on the night of the New Moon when all the stars are fully visible.

I lumped it in here because such a feat would require the might of Mazdamundi.


Filling the Roster
I definitely would prefer to keep Skinks as the drivers of Rango society. Probably want some of them to be spellcasting priests. I probably don’t want to give them a rigid caste system. That goes against the prevailing narrative of a Wild West setting.

Chameleon Skinks are too OP to allow in this setting, unless someone convinces me otherwise.

Kroxigor are a mixed bag. On one hand, Kroxigor are single-handedly strong enough to wrestle a grizzly bear and take down nearly any monster from Native American folklore. They could also certainly plow a field or drive in a bunch of railroad spikes superfast. That kind of makes them OP. On the other hand they would need a lot of food and water. That’s a lot of potential complications. Let’s just throw them out, unless someone convinces me otherwise.

Saurus/Sauri are tricky. They are not so strong that they would dominate all physical tasks, but in order to keep up with everyone else, they should not have ballistic skill 0. They should be able to fire guns or at least bows. But if Saurus Warriors can use ranged weapons, they are basically big somewhat clumsy Skinks. I don’t know whether it’s best to work out some kind of division between Skink and Saurus, or maybe we could just make the Skinks a little bigger. Maybe we don’t even to call the Rangos Skinks or Saurus. Maybe call them Saurian Ancients. It works for 9th Age. What if we made the Rangos match the most recent findings of paleontologists and give them feathers? Maybe we can play up the Wild West motif and make them look like giant gila monsters.

I’m certainly open to suggestions.


Filling the Bestiary
There is a strong contingent of the scientific community that some/most/all dinosaurs might have actually been warmblooded. We can put Rangos in a fairly cold, somewhat barren climate. It would be weird to see Carnosaurs roaming the great prairies, swallowing up buffalo like they were popcorn.

Cold Ones would probably be okay. Terradons could fit into a Wild West setting, but that would give the Rangos a huge advantage if the other factions didn’t have their own version of air power. Either steampunk powered gliders or flying horses or something.

Huagerdons are not canon, but I think they would fit in pretty well. Culchan riders would be pretty cool and they look like they belong on the prairie more than a Cold One rider does. They are like big scary road runners or prairie chickens...of death!

Ripperdactyls would probably eat too much to be able to survive such an enviroment. Razordons would be outmoded in a setting with a firearms but Salamanders would be pretty scary but not too OP. Salamanders would be acceptable and I have a lot of Salamander models, so I'm biased.

The Rangos of course could stick to horses, dogs, cows, and chickens just like everyone else.

Now if the setting had a nice jungle biome somewhere adjacent to the other biomes, the Rangos could potentially command all the dinosaurs we know and love, but only on their home turf. If they need to interact with the outside world, they have to make due with less.


Guns, bows or blowpipes?
When I covered the Slann I came to the basic conclusion that the more Slann involvement the Rangos have, the slower they will adapt to new technology. The less involved the Slann are, the more they will adapt.

Of course, the Rule of Cool applies. If you want to have a Skink driving a steampunk train and packing a pair of six shooters, go for it.

Being natives to the New World, even outside the jungle they probably have a better understanding of the lay of the land. Even if the Rangos adapt to firearms, they probably never forgot how to make deadly contact poisons.

Even if they are slow to cotton to steam power, steel tools, and firearms, they are probably okay helping themselves to domesticated animals. Taming animals to do their bidding is something they are accustomed to doing. They’d probably be okay raising chickens, goats, pigs and cattle for food if they can get them. I’m sure they spin wool from sheep or learn to ride horses with a minimum of fuss.


Eggs, spawning pools, or live births?
If the Rangos rely on spawning pools to replenish their numbers, they would be required to not hold specific patches of land, and this would make them very easy for the warmblooded races to isolate and destroy. Thematically it might setting appropriate if the original spawning pools can be sent to the sky and they replenish themselves with magic rains. I think this is pretty cool.

If Rangos spawned this way this would imply they are a mystical race. Even if you take Slann out of the equation, the Rangos would probably have more powerful wizards than the humans, elves, and goblins.


Another option would be to have Rangos lay eggs. That’s more mundane, and it makes the Rangos more able to adapt to living in a wider variety of environments. This would technically qualify as a form of sexual reproduction, so there would be male and female Rangos. This would make them more relatable to the warmblood races, but not that relateable. It would be very hard for most humans to tell the difference between a male and female Skink. There would be male and female Rangos, but they would culturally pretty androgynous with very little social distinction between males and females.


A variation would be to have Rangos give live birth. This would be very similar to them laying eggs, but species that give live birth display more sexual dimorphism than species that do not. In this case it would probably relatively easy for humans to tell male and females apart. Also, during later stages of pregnancy a female would need to refrain from doing anything dangerous. There would be distinct social roles among the Rangos not unlike the division of labor among genders for real world humans in the 19th century.


I think I prefer the magic rains for no other reason than Lizardmen romances kind of squick me out.




On to Orcs and Goblins…because reasons

You can have a fantasy setting without orcs or goblins, but I’m not sure if you can a Warhammer setting without orcs or goblins.

They don’t really need an extensive backstory. In all Warhammer settings, orcs are just there. They always have been and always will be.

Traditionally orcs and goblins are less intelligent than humans. We can keep that, but I’m not a big fan of the extreme accents. They shouldn’t talk that different from other extras in a Western movie. Maybe a little more roughhewn than the others but not by much. I find extreme accents annoying. They should also be smart enough to shoe horses, craft crude but serviceable firearms, and create wacky steam powered devices that somehow work against all rational expectations.

In any event their accents should be stereotypical Western and not Cockney like in WHF.


Filling the Roster
In an age of firearms, it is less important to have both Orcs and Goblins. If we only keep one, I would prefer to keep the orcs and dump the goblins. Orcs are more iconic to the Warhammer brand than goblins. Notice that while the 40K Orks do have an equivalent to goblins called gretchins, but I’ve never actually seen someone choose to actually field gretchins, at least not in numbers.

The size and intelligence differences between orcs and goblins is not extreme. There could be room for orcs and goblins. There are probably aren’t room for night goblins, forest goblins, regular goblins, and hob goblins though. The orcs probably don’t need subtypes either.

A case could be made to have indigenous New World greenskins and Old World transplant greenskins. The New World native greenskins could use the same models for WHF Forest Goblins and Savage Orcs. The Old World orcs and goblins would of course need their own models with shootin’ irons and cowboy hats.

Hmmm, then you’d either have the more intelligent and technologically advanced goblins murder all their orc tyrants, or if the orcs were just as smart as goblins, but also way bigger than would brutal overlords driving their minions into battle or work.

Puts a new spin on an orc “Boss.” That could work. Maybe open non-combat personalities like having orc bullies manage chaotic work crews.

But you would need at least a brief explanation. Either goblins breed faster or some past genocidal event nearly wiped out the orcs and they have yet to recover.

I do not see the point to having snotlings. They are mainly present in Warhammer Fantasy for comic relief and orcs and goblins provide their own comic relief.

Giants are generic enough of a generic monster to fit in any setting, but why would they pal around with the greenskins? Trolls are similar. I’m okay including them in the setting but why should they follow the goblins around?


Filling the Bestiary
For mounts, I’m okay giving orcs horses and giving goblins ponies. It’s not as high fantasy as riding boars and wolves and spiders, but it is setting appropriate. Especially appropriate if the greenskins steal horses from the humans.

For those who love exotic mounts, orc boar riders would look a little out of place, but goblin wolf riders would work with very little modification. I spent enough summers in New Mexico to know that the American southwest has some big scary spiders dwelling there. I could picture goblins riding giant brown recluse spiders or tarantulas. Arachnarok-sized spiders would probably strain suspension of disbelief.

If the orcs need to have an exotic mount, I think they would look really awesome riding grizzly bears. That’s seriously bad ass, but there probably shouldn’t be entirely cavalry squads of them. It’d be a mount for Big Bosses only.

If you get bigger than a bear, that might be a little too much fantasy setting, not enough western setting. I think I would much rather see orcs and goblins riding steam powered monstrosities rather than actual monsters.

I find squigs a bit off-putting but lots of people like them. I guess it’s not a huge stretch to imagine them bouncing around some mesa somewhere. Also, Otzi’mandia may not take too kindly to a ban on squigs.


The Birds and the Bees
I am not sure, but I believe the idea that orcs grow from spores originated with the orks of 40K. In 40K orcs come from spores because it’s more sci-fi than traditional birth. Western setting often have an expectation of gritty realism. Maybe spore based reproduction is too sci-fi for Warhammer Wild West, maybe it’s not.

In Warhammer Fantasy the advantage of orcs and goblins spawning from spores is that the heroic men of the Empire never have to make the difficult choice “What do we do with the orcs’ women and children left behind now that we won this battle?” If there are no orc non-combatants, than that means the orcs’ enemies don’t have to commit war crimes in order to clear out the greenskin menace.

If orcs make babies the “traditional way” I still think their reproduction should imply they are more expendable than humans. Female Orks in Shadowrun for instance give birth to twins and triplets more often than single babes. Orcs and goblins should probably mature from infancy to adulthood faster than humans.

Even if they are murdering and stealing to make ends meet, it seriously changes orcs and goblins if they have families at home. It humanizes them. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Making orcs and goblins sexually reproduce with each other also opens the door to orcs and humans mating. Not a big fan of that fantasy trope myself.

I’m open to suggestions on this and every other topic.


And the Rest…

Okay so we have two major human cultures, a couple minor ones. We got greenskins and Rangos. I covered multiple possibilities for undead and daemons or their equivalent.


Elves
I arranged events to eliminate High Elves, Dark Elves, and Wood Elves. Now they are just elves. They live in New Ulthuan, the land that was once called Naggaroth. The elves don’t have any major holdings in the Wild West, but they can and do travel to the Old West to try to make a new life for themselves.

Since the descendants of the High Elves and the descendants of the Dark Elves still distrust each other, fleeing to the frontier is a good last resort for those who want to put some space between themselves and their kin.

There are not many elves in Ulthuan who descended from Wood Elves, but those that do would probably find the wild frontier of the New World more appealing than the cold sparsely vegetated lands of New Ulthuan.

Elves could exist as their own faction or they could be a subgroup within one or more human factions or they could be true mercenaries. A hypothetical Mordheim game would look like this.

You have to pick faction A, B, C, or D. Any faction can take elves (faction E) but you cannot spend more than 25% of your points on Elf units.


Dwarfs
I can easily picture dwarfs working in a period appropriate Wild West gold mine. I can easily picture them hammering in railroad stakes. I can easily picture them as engineers both building, maintaining, and driving the trains. I can picture these things almost too easily. They could probably make the best guns too.

A dwarf working a mining or railroads can probably get three times as much work done as a human working the same job. With their famous lust for gold, shrewd minds, and long life spans, I think dwarfs would end up running the place. That can crowd out other characters.

Based on the history I made up entirely, the dwarfs would probably not be a big colonial power, their political status was reduced to being a minority population in the Empire of Man, but I can picture small numbers of enterprising dwarfs going out west to make their fortune.

Can the West handle dwarfs? What do ya’ll reckon?

Ogres

Why?

In Warhammer Fantasy Ogres serve three rolls. Comic relief, shifty mercenaries, and flesh eating monsters.

Orcs and goblins fill the comic relief role in this setting. Elves and maybe dwarfs fills the mercenary role (as well as any shady gunslinger really). Native American folklore has tons of cool monsters to fill the niche for scary cannibalistic monsters.

Halflings
I don’t believe they are necessary unless someone convinces me otherwise.

I was concerned that there isn't room for everyone, but I guess we can keep halflings in. They don't take up that much room, do they?

via Imgflip Meme Generator

Maybe, maybe we can bring Halflings back to their Tolkien roots. It’s worthy of a thread topic itself, but here goes (or you can watch this video and skip to minute 13:00). The Lord of the Rings has epic perfect elves, mighty noble dwarves, terrifying orcs, and even the humans are all impressive and larger than life. The Hobbits are the everyman characters of this setting. This sort of popped up again in Willow, but every other depiction of Halflings in fiction has walked away from this. Halflings are nearly always comic relief or sneaky fiends, but not everymans.


Beastmen

Greenskin banditos, random monsters, and prowling undead. Do we have enough things that go bump in the night? If no, we can add beastmen to the mix.

Animals
Goatmen are a bit too Old World for my tastes. Yeah. I know some people kept domesticated goats in the Western United States, and the western highlands have mountain goats, but I’d rather the Wild West Beastmen be more iconic to the West and not look like European transplants.

Given how cows are a ubiquitous food source, minotaurs would be a lot less scary. Buffalomen would look cool but would they be scary enough? But buffalo are certainly iconic to the Wild West. Moose might work. Moose men would be rare but they would huge, at least ogre sized. Apart from moose and buffalo, I would steer clear from other herbivores to base Beastmen off of.

Vulture based Beastmen would also be a good fit. Vultures are a common element of the Wild West mythos and they have a sinister reputation that is thematically fitting for Beastmen, since they are ugly and disgusting. This would give the Beastmen a flyer.

I really like the Apisi. A coyote based Beastman created by Lustria-Online’s own @TlacTlac’Natal the Observor. They are fierce predators but they are also quick and cunning. They wouldn’t try the blunt forth direct charges of Gors and Ungors. I think I’d rather use Tlac’s Apisi than Beastmen based on other western predators like bears, wolves, or cougars. Foxes fill the same thematic niche as coyotes but since foxes also exist in the real world, coyotes fits the setting better.

I do see some appeal for rattlesnake men, but that would blur the line between the Rangos and the Beasts of Chaos. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Scorpion men would be a bit too weird for my tastes, but scorpions would make good attack dogs for the Apisi, or maybe the undead or the greenskins.

I’ll just say it now. If Warhammer Wild West includes Beastmen in at all, at least some of the Beastmen should be the Apisi.


But it’s not all about the animals. What drives them?
That kind of depends on Chaos. Are the Apisi loyal minions of Chaos? If the answer is “yes” the Western Beastmen are going to probably try to murder everyone they can find.

But what if they are not minions of Chaos. What if they were minions of Chaos but were freed when the Chaos gods died or were banished? Some Beastmen might long for the return of their old gods, but I could also imagine them fearful of the return of the Chaos gods and actively resisting it.

Of course this adds the tragedy that even if they are fighting against Chaos, both Old World immigrants and the native New Worlders alike would refuse to believe them, having grown up on stories of how bad the Beasts of Chaos were.


Skaven
As alluded to in my part one narrative, I am returning Skaven to the roots of boogeyman. Many fear them, many doubt they exist. The core reason they came to the West was to hide.

That would put them into the sneaky camp rather than the overwhelming numbers camp. “Oh my gods! There are 1000 Skaven attacking our village!”

So just as I thought of using iconic animals from the West to reinvent the Beastmen I pondered making the western Skaven based off of North American rodentia. Problem is a Porcupine, prairie dog, or possum Skaven would be too cute to be threatening. Maybe a weasel Skaven would be sufficiently evil looking.

One iconic western rodent is the packrat. They don’t look that different from regular rats, but they could be incorporated thematically if the Western Skaven are notorious kleptomaniacs. The setting already has lots of factions that would make good rustlers. The Skaven need a more compelling reason than this to exist I think.

I feel like my ideas for Skaven are not very compelling.


Something New?

My first idea is to include the Fair Folk. They are one of my favorite archetypes from fantasy stories and I feel they are underrepresented in RPGs and tabletop games, yet overrepresented in Star Trek.



They are a big part of European folklore, and European folklore has a huge impact on the mythos of the Wild West, so we could include the Fair Folk, but I’m not sure if we should. The field is already pretty crowded and any new faction should just ooze the Wild West from their pores.

I am a big fan of the Gargoyles animated series in the 1990s. One concept they added in season two was a supernatural group called Oberon’s Children. Oberon is the legendary faerie king from Celtic folklore but it just happened that Oberon’s Children were a diverse lot. His children included traditional Celtic Faerie creatures like the Banshee, the Lady of the Lake, and the Weird Sisters, but they also included the Norse god Odin, the Egyptian god Anubis, the Native American trickster spirits of Raven and Coyote, and the African trickster spirit Anansi.

Maybe some kind of similar expanded network of Fair Folk that includes both European and Native American folklore would fit the bill. Or maybe it’s better to leave them all as unique monsters rather than put them in a semi-organized faction.


Next thought for a new faction would be something nature-y. I guess that niche is already in Warhammer Fantasy with Wood Elves, but we would pick something more along the lines of Native American myths. I don't have any brilliant details, just the broad concept.


Next though for a new faction could fit into Chaos or Undead, but could also stand on its own: Prometheans, in other words Frankenstein's monster. Frankenstein is not really a Wild West, but it is an iconic 19th century story. As a creatures of science and sorcery they would also fit a Warhammer/Wild West hybrid setting well.


I’m certainly open to suggestions on new players!


Note, human nationalities like Cathayans, Brettonians, Kislevites and human political/occupational factions Imperial inquisitors, Chaos cultists, bandit gangs, lawmen would not really count as new players. They'd be human groups and worth of it's own topic here.

 

Agreed.

Agreed. The New World should look fairly similar to the real world Western hemisphere.

I disagree. I am a big fan of DC comics and I'm used to the notion of having an Earth-1, Earth-2 etc. Nothing of Warhammer 8th edition or Age of Sigmar is canon here.

In this universe, there was no End Times. The Forces of Order won (at cost). The Skaven, Daemons of Chaos, Beasts of Chaos, Undead Legions, and the Warriors of Chaos were all decisively defeated. Anything inconvenient in official Warhammer lore can be tossed aside or ignored. For instance if we decide we don't want ogres in this setting, we don't have to come up with an elaborate justification for why they went extinct or why they didn't come out west, we can just say they never existed.

If I was actually trying to make a pitch to Games Workshop and they insisted on keeping everything canon, this would be the pitch I would use. But I prefer the hand wave of "Not the same people who suffered through the End Times" rather than "Most of the End TImes survivors entered the Age of Sigmar, but a handful came to Westhammer instead."

They both work I guess, I just prefer the first idea.

I like it.

That's a question I have wrestled with. Do I want to have lots of groups of Lizardmen in all the different places or do I want to introduce some other New World Native group.

My original plan was to have two big Civil Wars. The one in the Old World you described and a latter one in the New World, but I guess we don't really need a New World Civil War.

I am not opposed to this idea, of having Cathyans and/or Cathyans, but I was planning to have a U S of A analog if for no other reason than to have a big melting pot where you have a bunch of individuals and not a bunch of feuding nation states arguing about map lines.

I guess the original intent of the GW was to make Kislev a stand-in for Russia and in my setting fluff I sort of made Kislev closer to Denmark. Maybe my version of Kislev can be Prussia or "West Kislev," a portion of Kislev that joined the Empire then became it's own sovereign nation whereas the much larger but less populous East Kislev maintained their Russia-ness.