8th Ed. My summary of ET:Skaven Lizardmen section

Before I begin I have to say I was talking to my local store manager and he said that this is all just a story and that no armies will go away slash be effected.

From what I read (about 2/3 ) of the story the main line is: Lizardmen get shafted.

However there's some good fluff too. Spoilers below.






At the start it is made to sound like the lizardmen are only ready to fight demons and so when a metric s**t ton of rats apppear from the land around their major cities they are unprepared. Apparently the rats used magic to stealth in close and noone foresaw or detected it... parts of the story mentioned that Slann were using spells designed to stop demons to fight that rats who, though blinded, shrugged it off. Not sure why the slann didn't adapt and use different spells - it wasn't explained.

So in the first part Tettoekko or whatever his name is (palanquin skink) is organising defending his temple city as ALL the slann in existence are unconscious from stopping morrsleib crashing into the world. I thought that saurus led the armies but I guess not. So anyway the city is being overrun and tetto orders the city to retreat with the comatose slann but some skinks object so the rats swarm some of this slann and rip them to shreds. Tetto calls downs comet as they escape which hits a bit too soon and vaporises the skaven but also a bunch of lizardmen near the back who die unless they were near tetto/slann with shield of the old ones.

Mazdamundi is the first Slann to awaken and sends the order to the now awakening slann to evacuate. So a bunch of the temples and stuff rise up and shoot off into space.

Itza is surrounded and the rats dig a trench and line it with stakes (didn't read about a bunch of what happened here I skipped to the end.)

A bunch of rats assault the city of mists (didn't read about it skipped to the end).


Anyway the ending.

Mazda is on Zlaaq and senses that the skaven have released something on the other side of the world and spirits out to investigate. They basically shoot morrsleib with a giant cannon or something to cause it to split and fall on the earth. The story says that this would completely annihilate the world so no idea why the skaven were doing it as in the Nagash book they try and stop him so he WONT destroy the world...

Mazda orders Kroq Gar to cut a path to this temple he needs to get to to stop them so Kroq and the army start mutilating ratmen to get to it. A plaguelord (skolk?) appears before Kroq and tried to kill him but the hand of the gods protects him (although not his bodyguard) and he ends up stabbing him through the chest with the spear. Some weird plaguey skaven who is more powerful comes to rescue skolk and knocks Kroq away but doesnt kill him and carries skolks body away. Kroq roars for a new carnosaur (Grimloq was zapped by skolk) and continues his murderous warpath.

Inthe meantime Mazdamundi suddenly remembers that he is the most powerful spellcaster in existance and flames a bunch of rats away and teleports to the pyramid (leazing Zlaaq to immediatelydie to the apparently flame-resistant rats that had survived).

Anyway, he and the remaining mage priests tap the geomantic web and start to blast it out of the sky - some parts start as big as lustria itself so this moon must have been f*****g huge (they really need to think about what the write). The start breaking it down but loads of mage prists die from the strain. Finally only mazda is left blasting it out and does a pretty good job when he finally collapses and ends up dieing.

When mazda entered the pyramid it mentions that he couldnt see the remains of lord kroak which puzzled him but he dismisses it. Then, at the very end kroak is magically on his palanquin on top of the pyramid and watching the world about to die. He raises a mummified hand (for what reason I couldn't gather as he is a spirit not a zombie) and makes a magical forcefield to contain the destruction as fiery meteors of morrsleib rain down on Lustria (and for some reason the southlands which are on the other side of the world bu NOWHERE else is getting hit). In doing so he saves the world but it says he is destroyed by the firestorm in the process (although why his remains being burned would kill a spirit is beyond me).

The only other section I read was about Chakax and it was awesome. He is standing in front of his slaan as a bunch of assassins enter (gutter runners I think) who see him and dismiss him as slow and lumbering. They go to kill him and predictably he smashes them in seconds - but - theres a master assassin creeping along the ceiling. A drop of venom falls to the floor and it alerts chakax who attacks the assassin, causing himto fall to the floor. The assassin uses some weird cathay shiz to try and get past him but chakax blocks to the end but its a feint to stab him with a weeping blade - which is described as being so lethal that most people would be dead within seconds of it cutting them. The assassin rams it home with 2 hands to the hilt and stands back and waits for chakax to fall down dead. Except chakax shoots out an army, grabs the assassin, tosses him up and smashes him out of the air with his mace, killing him. He then removes the dagger and goes back to standing watch over the mage priest. Such a badass!

So long story short.
-Apparently the lizardmen can only prepare to face one foe and cannot adapt to another.
- All the might of the slann and the geomantic web can barely stop the moon from being pulled to earth by the skaven but tetto can pull a massive comet onto a pinpoint location. Also the slann can't blast apart chunks of the moon (which seems to be half the size of the world in this fluff) without all of them dieing.
-Mazdamuni forgets he is the most powerful being in existence.
-Skink attendants fuss and get their mage priests killed
- Lizardmen get completely wrecked by the skaven, save a few named characters
- Mazdamuni and Kroak die to save the world from a skaven doomsday plot which was going to burn the atmosphere and kill everything (including the skaven) even though the skaven would do anything to stop nagash killing the world.

Needless to say I was disappointed. The only thing I really enjoyed was chakax and kroq gar's big fights.

There are parts in the middle I have't read - there could be something good there but I didnt have time to see.

Oh and we got no incarnates - but the dwarves did. Go figure.

 

He isn't ethereal, he quite literally IS a mummy. He is even flammable, so he is definitely not a spirit.

Wish his in-game stats reflected this. i don't see chakax survive even a single round of combat against a standard skaven assassin, especially not one with weeping blades.

This is still pissing me off. Even OGRES had been a better option, but they decide to give an incarnate OF THE WINDS OF MAGIC to a race that specifically cannot use magic.

Come on GW, we know you love your dwarves (Otherwise you wouldn't have allowed their cannons to be this ridiculously overpowered), but giving them the incarnates of magic?

Really, this can go two ways, and either direction is completely stupid:
1. Give dwarves magic, which makes no sense, or
2. Not give them magic, in which case, why did they waste these avatars of magic on them in the first place?

Thankfully, this is the only thing that really rubs me the wrong way, so overall, I'm not too let down by this entire End Times thing so far. But of course, I'm not one to complain about losing named characters, so I'm sure a lot of people are in uproar about losing so many of them.

 

In all the fluff it describes his spirit being the thing that does everything - his remains are quite literally his remains - he doesn't need them.

And the incarnate of fire really did irritate me. We havent even got a new unit - we got nothing - no level 5 for slaans or anything - just a lousy skink formation


What is keeping me from quitting WHF altogether is that the store manager said this was just a story line and wouldnt affect the game at all (i.e. no floating bubbles of reality) although he mentioned that books might be condensed (I guess like the LotR ones with multiple armies in one book)

If it does all go t*ts up in May with 9th then I will simple tweak my homebrew Lizardmen army book with some playtests and continue with 8th - possibly with a few modifications.

 

Kroq-Gar as Beastwind incarnate.....god I would have loved that.

"Hand of Gods now fires Amber Spears"

 

You see, after Slann like contemplation, I WAS actually warming up to the possibility of no Slann being left alive or usable for 9th ed.

It would mean a new playing style and design as well as potential new and exciting fluff.



Then I read your summary....


Putting aside my bias as a Lizardman player and personal thoughts with regards to combats described (e.g Chakax taking two weeping blades to the chest and not dying) and just going with the fluff alone, I've made a few quick thoughts.

So starting with the positives.
At least it's not a complete white wash, you lose heroes, whilst others rise to the challenge and then some, that is good, almost gives you a sense of pride and it shakes things up a little.
- I find the idea of Kroak, once again giving his life to save the world makes him that much more of awesome Slann.


And now for the bad.
Inconsistances/plot errors:

These not only come across as amateurish and rushed, but also lazy. Mazdamundi having a sudden "Oh that's right I'm the best caster in the game" moment...lazy, all Slann are frequently credited with the depth and clarity of their thoughts, this however is virtually cartoonish.

There seems to be this IMMENSE focus on a few characters and then complete omissions on others, (although seeing "no news is good news" that could well mean they're alive). Where is Nakai? How about Gor-rok, or any other of our hero level characters?

 

Thank you for posting your summary. I realize it's not as good (for me) as reading the stories directly from the ET books, but since I know I won't read those books and still have an interest in how the Warhammer story is changing in the ET, I appreciate the incite on the story, even filtered trough someone else's reading.

Thank you.

 

I would be willing to forgive about half of the terrible stuff GW has planned if they give us a Kroxigor hero finally.

 

I'll try and get back to finish reading it properly - I probably skimmed about 20 pages then read 11 or so in about 10-15 mins so there will be bits I've missed and I had to read a few sections twice to make sure I was reading what I though I was accurate.

The biggest issues for me were
-The Slann being godlike casters that have been alive for milennia and suddenly being very lacklustre or downright stupid. There was also a part where Mazdamundi is dying and trying to crawl across the floor to get outside one last time. The fluff says they tried to use banishing spells against the Skaven...why? They've fought them before they would know good ideas.
-The Skaven tryin gt o destroy the world that they are trying to rule - not to mention that fact that their first plan was to pull the moon down into Lustria and the SECOND plan was to shoot the moon - were they expecting the moon to stay up there so they could shoot it? Why try and pull it down in the first place? What if the moon HAD crashed down what good would their 100 years-in-the-making cannon have been?
-Why on earth did the chunks of moon fall solely on Lustria AND the Southlands - which are on the other side of the world?! Some of the chunks decided to randomly go round half the world before falling on the southlands?
-Where was Sotek?

 

"The serpentine demi-god you're trying to reach is currently unavailable, please leave a message after the hiss."


Sounds a bit...well, loaded with inconsistancies and cringe worthy moments.
Really hope Nakai does something (not dying), he's effectively the Batman of Lustria.

 

One thing which you guys haven't pointed out is apparently Temple Guard are fictitious beings who don't exist, otherwise, WHERE TH F'CK WERE THEY!?!?!?

 

It may seem like that, but the Temple Guard were everywhere. Honestly, they were really the only ones around to defend the cities. The rest of the Lizardmen's Saurus had gone to Xahutec to fight the daemons. The Temple Guard held out pretty damn well in every city, but sadly were slowly overwhelmed.