1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Army Fluff Quasi-Epilogue to New Alliances

Discussion in 'Fluff and Stories' started by Scalenex, Feb 7, 2021.

  1. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,296
    Likes Received:
    18,315
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I have a background in accounting and economics. Not a lot of fantasy enthusiasts care about as much about a fantasy economy as I do. I wrote this blurb a long time ago. I was intending to work this into a story but I wrote myself into a corner.

    Either I have daemons come back in which I will pretty much created a sequel to New Alliances that completely rehashes the original plot or I have them Clan Ostrel skaven try some shennagans, and I kind of like Clan Ostrel and I like my versions of Zlatan and Karak Zorn. I don't want them to die. I cannot imagine if Clan Ostrel tries anything big that Zlatan and Karak Zorn will refrain from trying to wipe out Ostrel.

    Here is background fluff with no story. I hope someone enjoys it.

    I'm not sure what the official GW says about Zlatan and Karak Zorn, but in my fluff universe Karak Zorn has been isolated from Old World Dwarves so long that they never developed black powder weapons or steam engines. I figured they wouldn't have Slayers as a unit option. The Karak Zorn are a little gung ho. You could take a Slayer character but they don't have enough people taking the Slayer oath to field units of them.

    Zlatan has fewer Slann taking the field and fewer Saurus warriors. They have very Cold One Riders but they do have a lot of Skink Horned One Riders. I created this homebrew codex for what Southlands armies could have.

    I get so few opportunities to play 8th edition that I'll stick with the ordinary army book, but I do have thoughts on what a Fort Stroln army would like. It would be a merger of the Southlands list with a few omissions. No dwarf is going to follow a Slann, those floating toads are creepy, so no Slann or Relic priests.

    The dwarf army book would omit gryocopters, gyrobombers, Slayers, cannons, flame cannons, hand gunners, slayers, or dwarf lords.

    On the plus side, the dwarves have been providing the Lizardmen with steel weapons and the Lizardmen have been providing the dwarves with poison. Lizardmen would be able to upgrade units to have steel weapons (same stats, but add Armor Piercing) and various dwarf units would be able to take Poison attacks. I might add a new unit representing elite Saurus Warriors not part of the Temple Guard and armed with dwarf made gear. I'm thinking WS4, light armor (maybe heavy armor), two hand weapons (armor piercing).




    Dwarfs and Lizardmen have little in common with each other save common enemies, but they were both willing to try to find common ground. For the first time in centuries, neither Zlatan or Karak Zorn stood alone against their enemies.

    Neither the First or Third Race are very welcoming of outsiders. Now that immediate threat of Skaven and Daemons were driven away. Karak Zorn was not willing to tolerate a massive army of Lizardmen sharing their tunnels. The Skink Priests were not about to let a hordes of Dwarfs camp outside their sacred pools and temples either. Both parties welcomed roughly a dozen honored guests into their lands. Both the Dwarfs in Zlatan and the Skinks in Karak Zorn were treated well but they were limited in where they could go and always watched. Even if there were no trust issues, the two new allies’ homes were separated by a great distance.

    While the leaders pondered the difficulties of their situation, the rank and file solved the problem for them. Dwarf rangers and Skink patrols set up an informal camp roughly halfway between their two capitals. They could not be considered fluent in the other’s tongue, but they knew enough words and phrases to communicate where enemies were and where they were not. Where food and shelter could be found and where it could not. While the finest Dwarf and Skink artisans alike would cringe at the over-simplification, the scouts of both sides were sharing maps regularly penned by both races. If the leaders of the First and Third children of the Old One needed to discuss things, their scouts set up the meeting and others met at their growing camp.

    The camp soon had enough regular visitors that the camp required a bearer of a speaking stone (or Rune of Tongues) at all times. After Chameleon Skinks thwarted a small group of Skaven assassins trying to disrupt a meeting, both Zlatan and Karak Zorn decided to make their temporary camp, permanent.

    Something that was neither dwarf hold nor Lizardmen kahoun began to emerge. Both the High Skinks and the runesmiths came up with their own formal name for the join settlement but the informal name the rank and file Dwarf used gradually became the name used by both races: Fort Stroln.

    The Dwarfs did not tolerate the sloppiness of the Skink masons. The Skink priests were exasperated that the Dwarfs were more concerned with obtaining an extra iota of structural integrity instead of aligning every corner of each structure with auspicious constellations. Generally they built their own separate buildings. Still they were able to work together to some extent. The Dwarfs were more than willing to use stone hauled forth by Kroxigor and Stegadon. The Skinks were willing to let Dwarfs secure the foundations of their temples as long as the Skinks dictated exactly where the buildings would lay.

    Most of the buildings were huts for living quarters or storehouses. There were shrines to all the major Old Ones. Not to be outdone in piety, the Dwarfs created small stone shrines to honor their gods and their honored dead. There were towers for crossbowmen, usually unmanned but always fully stocked with bows and ammunition. It was figured the superior range would make them the first line of defense but no small number of buildings had slits to allow javelins or blowpipes to be fired out easily. Since no one knew exactly where the camp should end, no permanent large standing walls were erected yet, but the camp was circled by a relatively crude stone barricade that was expanded when the camp grew.

    There was talk of making more secure accommodations for beasts of war at the moment the camp only had a few artificial nests for Terradon and a few stables for donkeys. No one was sure to keep Stegadons or Horned Ones, let alone Razordons and Salamanders. The area is too dry to keep Lurkerdons stabled long term.

    There were dozens of buildings, both wood and stone, but the capstone building would be a fortified keep where the entire camp could fall back to if pressed but it would be years before it was finished. At the rate the camp was growing, the Dwarfs insisted that the keep be able to house space and food for at least a thousand Dwarfs though by design it was expected to hold at most 500 Dwarfs. By their math, a Saurus was 1.5 Dwarfs, a Kroxigor was four Dwarfs, and a Skink was 0.7 Dwarfs. For the purpose of space and provisions of course. No one was crass enough to decide how the actually value of the various races stacked up.

    The most impressive completed building was the Temple of Uxmac, the Messenger of the Old Ones. It is more of a headquarters than a holy shrine. The most complete maps and patrol routes were stored there and the leaders of various patrol groups flitted in and out. It also housed private meeting rooms where Skink and Dwarf leaders could hash out trade deals.

    The Slann would not say a word about trade leaving that petty detail to the Skinks. The Skinks naturally inclination was to offer the Dwarfs anything the Skinks thought the Dwarfs could use that the First didn’t need for themselves, but even with their friends, the Dwarfs expected fair and equal trades for everything even amongst their friends. The Skinks learned to negotiate trade deals because the dwarves are suspicious if no one tries to haggle. While only Belrikt really figured it out, at least by Dwarf standards, the Third Race was actually being uncharacteristically generous with their terms.

    While the Dwarfs were doing most of the actual building construction, and they would have ordinarily charged a steep price for this. If the Skinks ever said “Fine, we’ll build it ourselves!” that was a good motivator to get Dwarfs to volunteer their services for free simply to demonstrate their innate superiority with stone. That manipulation could not last forever, but a clever Skink Chief pointed out that the First’s scouting parties covered a much larger swath of ground then the Dwarf rangers did and the Dwarfs all benefited from this. The rank and file scouts and builders were not really interested in balancing the scales of trade, but Skink Chiefs and clan leaders put into writing that the net contributions of the two races scouting and building were equal, few of them noticing their rank and file members’ eye ball rolls at this “great accord.”

    Even if they were willing to give away their armory stores for free, Karak Zorn could not realistically arm the mighty army of Zlatan, but every Scar Veteran and Skink Chief that did not have access to a magical weapon now at least had access to steel weapons, and if they opted to, a steel shield. Belrikt and a few other honored leaders had steel helmets but for the most part both Skinks and Dwarfs believed Dwarf forged armor was not worth the effort. A typical Saurus or a strong Skink could pick up a weapon intended for Dwarfs with no problem, but any worn piece of armor had to be specially fitted for the recipient.

    The first attempts to provide Dwarf weapons to Lizardmen on a large scale is with shooting. The intention to have Fort Stroln protected at all times by a permanent Cohort of Crossbow Skinks. While their Dwarf instructors initially chuckled as the Skinks struggled to deal with the intricacies of their new crossbows, their sharp eyesight and natural agility made them very fast learners. The Dwarfs required a high price for turning over crossbows, but they ask almost nothing for large iron needles which were very easy for Skink soldiers to fletch with feathers and coat with poison. The Dwarf crossbowmen enjoy the benefits of poisoned crossbow bolts. The Chameleon Skinks and other blowpipe users now enjoy armor piercing darts.

    Almost all Dwarfs favor working with stone and metal over any other task, but Dwarfs still need to eat. The jungles of the Southlands are dangerous, even to those born to it. Assuming he could avoid being eaten or poisoned, even the dimmest Skink, Saurus, or Kroxigor had little to fear of starvation in the jungles unless they were sick or injured. It was very easy for the citizenry of Zlatan to gather extra food for their Dwarf allies. The only real challenge is transporting it.

    With the Lizardmen providing the dwarves additional food, more dwarves can be moved from food gathering jobs to mining and forging tasks. This is letting the dwarves rapidly rebuild their arsenals from what the skaven looted in under two years. At the rate that the dwarves’ productivity is increasing, eventually it will become feasible for the dwarves to equip more and more of their Lizardmen allies with steel weapons.

    The Dwarf delegation to Zlatan, while ostensibly there to learn to speak Saurian and teach Skinks to speak Khazalid, is primarily made up of representatives from the Brewers Guild. Every time the Skinks teach them about a new edible plant, the first thing they do is see how it tastes fermented. While it first appeared that Dwarfs favored fermented beverages for recreational spiritual purposes, Dwarf beverages can last a very long time without spoiling. Depending on the brew, a Dwarf (or a Skink or a Saurus) could easily survive by drinking his dinner if need be.

    While the First have a strong preference for fresh food, the Dwarf practice of salting provisions and their drying techniques for long term storage of solid food were within the Skinks’ grasp for centuries, they just didn’t consider the possibility. The First now had the means to trek far away from the jungle if they had to without a Slann magically sustaining them.

    Dwarf and Skink alike shared a thought.

    “We are allies now. What next?”

    A defacto currency.


    The Lizardmen had no interest in coinage. The idea of trading in gold coins was offensive. Silver and copper coins, pointless. Bartering was the cause of the day. Both Skink scribes and Dwarf traders are hardnosed and exact. Since almost all trade occurred in the confines of Fort Stroln, the Skinks and Dwarfs negotiated exchange rates.


    The way the Dwarfs figured, there was nothing useful they could provide to Lizardmen that was less than making an iron needle. It took very little time or materials to make a needle. So they measured all products in needles. Steel Javelin point, five needles. Saurus sized weighted Steel Axe head? Fifty needles. The Skinks boggled at how inefficient the Dwarfs were at foraging. A dwarf-days worth of nourishing but fairly bland starchy gruel was worth two needles to them. A dwarf-day’s worth of meat was worth up to ten needles depending on the species, cut, and freshness. Conveniently, the First and Third races had different enough food preferences that the Skinks often felt like they were getting a bargain. Not that the Dwarfs were picky eaters. Almost every Dwarf in Karak Zorn agreed that the quality of their nosh went up since they forged their new alliance and a lot of soldiers were clamoring for assignments to Fort Stroln for the abundance of fresh fruit and meat they got.

    No one traded in needles directly as currency. If the Contact poison for 50 crossbow bolts? That’s Fifty. needles. Throw in three doses of antidote in cases there’s an accident handling the poisons, that’s nine needles. The Skink would walk with eleven steel javelin points and four actual needles. Eventually both parties got tired of counting out their wares and walking away with “unsold” goods of their own manufacture. The two parties appointed one Dwarf and on Skink “High Scribes of Fort Stroln.”


    A hunting party drags in a tallosaur skinned and butchered tallosaur.


    “We present two hundred needles worth of meat to our warm-blooded allies.”

    Both scribes would write it down.


    Dwarfs haul a donkey carts of metal goods to camp.

    “We present three hundred needles worth of javelin tips for our cold-blooded allies.”

    Both scribes would write it down.


    If either race got 500 needles ahead of the other. The side that’s being “shorted” would share nothing until the account was back in zero balance.


    It became a good natured competition to see who could be more productive and for a while they kept going back and forth beating the threshold in good-natured competition until the stalls became irritating negotiating back to zero so often, that the threshold was raised to a thousand. With a healthy cushion built in, neither side ever hit a thousand. They tended to sea-saw back and forth around plus or minus 600.


    Eventually to save book keeping, if the food and ammunition directly is used for the benefit of Fort Stroln itself would be gratis. Same with any construction work or patrols. The honored guests in both Zlatan and Karak Zorn were all provided their amenities for free.

    While they generally didn’t want to host armed forces of the other side in their capitals. It was considered good sense to loan Skink patrols (generally with haugerdon blood hounds) to help the Dwarfs sweep their tunnels for scouts or saboteurs. After the first three random sweeps, they stopped finding any Skaven. Again, no charge. The payment for both was security and dead Skaven.

    The Dwarfs still don’t like to be in debt. The Lizardmen did not need Dwarf help securing Zlatan from invaders, but they sent the most patient and accommodating master stone mason to Zlatan to aid Zlatan’s security. While “they could never be up to a Dwarf’s standard” the Skink laborers and artisans learned well enough from his grumblings that they could make stronger foundations, more tight fitting blocks, and generally overall improvements to their stonework. The improvements were not dramatic, but they were rapidly encompassing nearly structure in the great city.

    Belrikt impressed Hodiri by insisting before the Dwarf that rune-crafted items never be cheapened with a value in needles. Even a million needles was not adequate for the Dwarfs greatest works. They were priceless. Same with the artifacts of the Old Ones. Symbolically, one Lizardmen speaking stone was traded for one Dwarven Rune of Tongues. Whenever the two allies met with manners of special importance, the negotiating leaders used the other race’s method of translation. Other than that the Lizardmen did not share any sacred artifacts of the Old Ones. The Dwarfs of Karak Zorn had so much respect for Belrikt that they all but demanded he receive a runic item as a gift. Hodiri was supervising construction of a runic set of armor for the celebrated Lizardmen general. That was the only runic item Hodiri planned to gift besides the traded Rune of Tongues.

    Both reptile and warmblood wanted to facilitate communication as much as possible. When they defeated the Skaven-Daemon alliance, Zlatan had two Speaking Stones and Karak Zorn had one Rune of Tongues. Now Zlatan had three speaking stones and Karak Zorn had six Rune of Tongues. The speaking stones took the work of five Skink Priests and twice as many artisan months. A Slann had to finish the enchantment at the end. In the same time, Hodiri instructed one of his apprentices to make as many Runes of Tongues as he could in the same time frame, in between his other projects.

    In addition to the attempt to step up production of magical items that aid in translations, more and more Skinks and dwarves are attempting to learn the language of the other group the old fashioned way. Even a few Saurus are picking up a little bit of Khazalid.
     
  2. lazycaptain35
    Saurus

    lazycaptain35 Member

    Messages:
    50
    Likes Received:
    76
    Trophy Points:
    18
    This was an amazing read
     
    Scalenex likes this.
  3. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,296
    Likes Received:
    18,315
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Amazing? I was aiming for "moderately interesting."

    Thanks. This was kind of a throwaway piece for me.

    But I never pass up an opportunity for shameless self promotion, so you should check out my back catalog. Perhaps pepper these older stories with likes, or thread necromancy them with comments. :)

    Tied Pieces
    After the Death of Sigmar, Merestar the Slann tries to take a more active hand in guiding humanity

    The Fall of Turochlitan (~5 pages)

    A pair of outcast vampires journey to Lustria with the goal of drinking a Slann's blood
    Count Renliss' Journey to Lustria (~21 pages)

    Klodorex is in disarray after the Slann disappear forcing an unlikely hero to unite the city

    The Orphaned Temple City (~39 pages)

    A party of Skinks is sent on a mysterious quest.

    Divided We Fall (~45 pages)

    Tal-Lat helps a stranded huagerdon hatchling in the Southlands

    The Huagerdon (~ 1 page)

    Southlands Dwarves and Lizardmen unite against Skaven and Daemons

    New Alliances (~43 pages)

    An unusual Skink priest finds his destined entwined with a cursed Human

    Legacies. a novella (~61 pages)

    Lord Renliss battles the Grand Commodore Harkon of the Vampire Coast for supremacy of Lustria's undead

    Dead Water (~25 pages)

    Brief History of the Burn Face Tribe of Savage Orcs (~1 page)

    Song of the Old Ones My WIP attempt at Lizardmen religious poetry

    Untied Pieces
    Skaven Short Stories I wrote (archive of Scalenex’s Under-Empire short story contest entries)
    Lizardmen Short Stories I wrote (archive of Scalenex’s Lustria-Online short story contest entries)
     
    Lizards of Renown and Paul1748 like this.

Share This Page