Discussion Warhammer Wild West as an alternative setting? Brainstorming

That's so nice, I wish I could like it twice. It certainly got my creative juices flowing.

Classic Chaos Gods

Let’s revisit Chaos Original Recipe.

Slaanesh: It is probably best we not talk about the topic of Wild West prostitution. I cannot picture Slaanesh in the Old West and not have some connection to brothels. So Slaanesh was defeated. Slaanesh might still exist as a powerful Daemon, but s/he is no longer a Demon Lord able to direct world events or direct armies of minions.

Nurgle: The European colonization of North and South America had the way paved for it by disease decimating the indigenous population, but disease was not a big theme of 1870s fiction. It’s not like no one ever got sick, but I’m not sure a plague lord is the best thematic fit for a Wild West setting. In this case Nurgle might be best as either a has-been Demon Lord or a sleeping giant.

So my first thought is that Nurgle is still a force to be reckoned with, but s/he is mostly focused on the densely populated lands of the Old World, Cathay, and the east coast of the UCA.

My second thought is if we come up with lots of good ideas for alternate Bigger Bads, we can crowd out Nurgle and make Nurgle a has been or sleeping giant. Don’t worry about Nurgle….unless we run out of ideas for season two.


Khorne: There is certainly room for a violent Chaos god in the Wild West, but I’m not sure collecting skulls is especially western. There are plenty of nasty murderous Native American spirits and monsters that would be a good replacement for the role of Brute Force Bigger Bad.


Tzeentch: Tzeentch who is ever changing is my favorite match for the Wild West. I think Tzeentch could fit in the Wild West with no modification. I still like the idea of a weakened Tzeentch cannibalizing one or more powerful beings (such as a Slann) and taking on aspects of the other creature(s).


Old World Gods Revamped....EEEEEVIL

The Drowned Lady: Even as the Empire of Man disintegrated, the Imperial Church of Sigmar remained strong. Any competing religion was subsumed or destroyed. The most stubborn holdouts against Sigmar’s hegemony were the followers of the Lady of the Lake in Brettonia. The Lady’s faithful fought back but they eventually buckled under the weight of Sigmar’s inquisitors. In desperation the Lady of the Lake marshalled her remaining power and entered the Chaos realm. Even in her weakened state, she was still stronger than most of the greater Daemons remaining.

She recruited many new Daemon minions and reinvented herself as the Drowned Lady. The Drowned Lady is the malevolent force behind inclement weather of all types, especially droughts and floods. The Drowned Lady has cultists in both the Old World and the New World. She has disproportionately more followers in the frontier than elsewhere because they are more geographically removed from the center of the Imperial Inquisition’s power. Naturally her followers like to capture victims and drown them, or imprison them and let them thirst to death.


The Elf Gods: The High Elves, Wood Elves, and Dark Elves have the same twenty-two gods. Each group favors certain gods over others. Twenty-two is a lot. I don’t like the Elves having twenty-two gods. The Dark Elf culture was brutalized, the Wood Elves were driven from Athel Loren and Ulthuan sunk into the sea. That cannot be good for the elven gods. Also, some of the gods could have died fighting Slaanesh. So here is my thought. Some of the elf gods are gone. Some of them remain patrons of the surviving elves, and some of them became tainted by Chaos.

Apart from Khaine, Assuryan, and Vaul, Isha, and Kurnous, generally few Elf players even remember the elf god names. We don’t really need to cover the elf gods in any detail. The interesting ones are the corrupt gods. Let’s make Vaul a corrupt god of the dark side of Industrialization and Manifest Destiny. Vaul is now a god of greed, pollution and violent assimilation.

There are a lot of elven gods that could be new corrupt gods but they are generally pretty obscure. Maybe lump them together and make like a triumvirate of evil that takes the place of a single Bigger Bad.

Spoiler: Want to see my math how I picked Vaul? No, skip this block

Probably Want Them Dead

-The Flame of Assuryan is underwater now. Assurayan is dead now.

-“The Ancients” are too vague for me to figure out, so let’s just take them out.

-Estreuth the Lord of Hunger is unnecessary. There are lot of cool cannibal monsters in Native American mythology, or we can borrow the Great Maw from the Ogres.

-Hukon the Sunderer is a pretty aggressive deity and would likely die battling Chaos early.

-Lileath the Maiden, Isha the Mother, and Morai-Hag the Crone are a set. It was their destruction that caused elf lifespan to dwindle. Isha was the biggest deity for Wood Elves and the Wood Elves were hit the hardest. She probably died and took the other two down with her. She would probably take her husband Kurnous down with her too.

-Nethu the Keeper of the Last Door. Morai-Hag the Crone, Loec the Shadow Dancer and Ereth Kial already have a “god of the dead” thing going. Why do we need Nethu too?

-Eldarazor the Lord of Blades. What are the odds of a minor martial deity surviving the Chaos War? Very little. Also, his main worshippers were the Eternal Guard which are long gone.

-Arathti, the Lady of Desire. We decided not to discuss that topic.

-Ellinill the Lord of Destruction. Yeah, he was destroyed. Destruction would be a good basis for a Bigger Bad, but Ellinill is too obscure to be a good basis for one.

Probably Want Them Intact

-Addaioth, the Bringer of Fire gets to remain an elven. Fire bringer gods are usually portrayed as being both benevolent and adaptable. So Addaioth is strong enough to avoid corruption and clever enough to avoid death.

-Mathlann the Lord of the Deeps is untroubled by Ulthuan sinking into the sea and Mathlann benefited from the new age of sea exploration.

Probably Want Them Corrupted

Vaul the maker was an important deity to all the elves. If there is any deity that can represent the dark side of industrialization and Manifest Destiny, I think a desperate corrupted Vaul would be a strong candidate.

Intact or Dead

Hekarti the goddess of magic either died at the hands of Khorne’s curse or adapted herself into a new magic deity that is responsible for elves having a slight edge on magic over the other races.

-Hoeth wouldn’t like the citadel of Hoeth sinking into the sea, BUT the High Elves had enough advanced warning of Ulthuan sinking that they could have probably salvaged the bulk of their library. I can go either way on this.

-Khaine becoming a corrupt god of murder with no redeeming qualities would be too cliché. Either Khaine should heroically die in battle against the Chaos gods or Khaine should evolve into a healthy aspect of elven martial tradition if only to subvert expectations.

Dead or Corrupted

-Ladrielle the goddess of mists should either fade away like mists or become some kind of goddess of deception.

-Anath Raema, the Savage Huntress is already pretty corrupt. Either she would gain a lot of power in the Chaos War or be overwhelmed by it and destroyed.

Intact or Corrupted

-Loec the Shadow Dancer was many elves last line of defense against Slaanesh. Without Slaanesh out the of the picture either Loec is going to seize Slaanesh’s power or become a powerful force for goodness.

-Ereth Khial, the Pale Queen of the underworld would also gain from Slaanesh dying and would either gain power or become overburdened by a bunch of elves dying at once. Either she can weather this and remain a benevolent protector of the dead, or she can become mad with power and become a tyrant over the dead. Since she tried to initiate a coup against Assuryan once, that leans her towards the evil camp.

-Drakira, Queen of Vengeance. A lot of bad things happened to elves. Either this will feed the Queen of Vengeance or overwhelm her.

I guess we need to ask the question. Do want Sotek to be a force for evil, a force for good, or an unpredictable wildcard entity. Whichever way we go, I think we should have Sotek branch out, so that Sotek is a god for everyone now, not just the Rangos.

The Great Maw: I’m not a huge fan of Ogre Kingdoms lore in general, but I can imagine the Great Maw existing in the West as a spirit of hunger and hardship on the frontier.

Gork or possibly Mork: My first instinct is to keep them as the vaguely developed gods of the greenskins and leave it at that. My second instinct is just to remove them. The orcs and goblins have no gods or they took on some bastardized version of the gods that civilized men follow.

My third instinct is that Gork killed Mork (or Mork killed Gork) and the victor went into the Chaos Realm and filled the power vacuum there becoming a new Chaos Lord, Gmork. Gmork as a Chaos god, would represent both violence and madness, sort of like a combination between Khorne and Slaanesh personality-wise.

The Horned Rat: The lore we got establishes that most, but not all the Skaven were exterminated. The survivors are laying low and trying to recover from near annihilation. The near destruction of the Skaven is not going to be a good thing for the Horned Rat. Here’s my thought. Either this weakened the Horned Rat enough that Sotek was finally able to kill him for good OR the Horned Rat adapted and picked up enough of the Chaos realm power to make up for the short fall. In the latter case, the Horned Rat is no longer a Skaven Chaos god, he is now a Chaos god for everyone. An ascended Horned Rat would be like an amalgam of Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle, and Tzeentch. Rats are ferocious, rats are fertile, rats carry disease, and rats are adaptable.

Sigmar Corrupted: If we really wanted to have an evil god representing all the dark side of Order, Sigmar would be a possible candidate. That is really rocking the Warhammer world in an extreme way, so I would prefer not to do this unless Sigmar became practically the only Bigger Bad in the setting.


New World Legends....EEEEEVIL

Wendigo: I refuse to have a Wild West Warhammer setting without the wendigo legend included in some way. Great Wendigo does not have to be a Bigger Bad. Wendigoes could just be random monsters that prowl the frozen north and venture south during harsh winters.

A cannibal spirits of cold and death that eats the hearts of those it slays is a good replacement Bigger Bad for Khorne. We all know Khorne, but Khorne is yesterday’s news. Let’s pick something new perhaps.

The Horned Serpent: The Horned Serpent, sometimes called the Uktena shows up in a lot of Native American mythology. Sometimes the Horned Serpent is a benevolent entity, sometimes it is portrayed as a neutral entity, and sometimes as dark destroyer. This kind of sounds like Sotek doesn’t it?

I think the Horned Serpent should be included in the mythos, and I think that the Horned Serpent should not just be an entity for the Rangos, but worshipped (or feared and hated) by large diverse populations. We just need to figure out if we want to make the Horned Serpent an evil entity, a good entity, or a wildcard.

Trickster Spirits: The archetype of the trickster is universal. Every culture on Earth has trickster spirits. The three Native American trickster spirits that I am most familiar with are Coyote, Raven, and Kokopelli, but they are hardly the only ones. Usually, these entities are portrayed as benevolent tricksters but not always. If for whatever reason, we decide to take Tzeentch off the table, I think we should pick a trickster from Native American lore and promote them to fil Tzeentch’s place. The names and the forms they take differ, but most tribes that have some kind of legend about monsters or witches who are “skin-changers.” They would be a good minion type for Chaos cults!

The Old Ones Fallen: There is a lot of material to make one of the Old Ones go bad. The only issue is it’s debatable whether the Old Ones are still kicking in Warhammer Fantasy. It might be a stretch to have one of the Old Ones healthy enough to fall to Chaos. If we did go this route, my vote would be to have Chotec turn evil. Where once Chotec was a giver of warmth and life, Chotec now represents the harsh desert sun that parches throats and bakes crops. A fallen Chotec’s worshippers would likely be fond of arson.

Any Old One could go mad and become evil as a response to the Slann dying en masse. If we wanted to go an ecoterrorist route, Itzl could avenge extinct species. Otherwise, you cannot go wrong with fear of the dark. Huanchi could be remade into something a lot less benevolent.


Revisiting my brain dump. What are my favorites?

If we decide we don’t need a Bigger Bad, I think we should turn the original four Chaos gods into “Medium” Bads. Powerful but not earthshakingly powerful and basically use Lord Agragax’s stuff verbatim.

If we decide we should only have one Chaos god be the Bigger Bad. My vote is for Tzeentch or the Horned Rat. We would use Lord Agragax’s stuff with mild modifications. The lesser demons who lead the gangs of course put their own personality on their little cult but they ultimate serve Tzeentch or the Horned Rat as their capo.

If we decide we want a new team of Bigger Bads, my favorites are Tzeentch (skin-changers), Vaul (evil steam punk similar to the Chaos Dwarfs), Great Wendigo (cannibals that excel at brute force), and the Drowned Lady or Fallen Horned Serpent (jack of all trades evil). They would still typically operate in small groups similar to what Lord Agragax stated.

Another idea is to split the Bigger Bads between civilized and uncivilized Bigger Bads. The Civilized Bigger Bad Team could include Vaul, the Drowned Lady, and an evolved Horned Rat. The Wilderness Bigger Bad team could include Tzeentch, Great Wendigo, and Gmork. Or if you didn’t want two teams and wanted one evil Order Bigger Bad and one evil wild Bigger Bad my vote would be Evil Sigmar or Vaul versus Tzeentch.


I was wrapping this up, then Y’ttar added a juicy tidbit to get me writing some more.


The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen would be a fine way to include Bigger Bads. Nagash/Tzeentch would make a great Death.

Khorne would obviously be war/strife. If we wanted to keep the trend of merged entities he could merge with Khaine. People already get the two of them mixed up.

Maybe Slaanesh ALMOST died. Where once Slaanesh represented excess now Slaanesh represents a lacking. Now Slaanesh is Famine. Maybe Slaanesh can mix with the Drowned Lady or Great Maw too if we must have hybrid entities. Or we could take Slaanesh out for the reasons mentioned above and have the Great Maw become famine by itself. Or we could work in the Great Wendigo for the cannibalism aspect.

That leaves Pestilence which is you know Nurgle. If we have to make Nurgle a bit different, Nurgle could have merged with the Horned Rat or Great Wendigo (in the latter Pestilence wouldn’t just be disease but would also include those slain by exposure to cold).

I just bent over backwards to come up with a bunch of rationales for hybrid entities. What if Tzeentch/Nagash is the ONLY hybrid entity. In many cases where the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are included in popular culture, Death is the most powerful and feared of the Four. Thus, it’s a good fit if Tzeentch/Nagash is the only dual entity. In all likelihood, very few Westerners are going to have the academic backing in ancient metaphysics to say “Oh, that’s Nurgle in a new form!” The Four Horsemen will be known as Death, Strife, Famine, and Pestilence. Who knows or cares how they came to be?


Y’ttar put me on a mental tangent. What if the Horned Rat is still alive and kicking but is NOT one of the new Chaos powers on the block. In this case the Skaven would no longer be minions of evil. They are probably not going to be cute and cuddly and benevolent, but it may be an interesting direction to have the Skaven just trying to survive as best they can, just like everyone else.

Then again, that is exactly what has been brought up as a possibility for Beastmen. I think it would be a fine change if Skaven OR Beastmen turned over a new leaf, but I think it would dilute the impact if Skaven AND Beastmen both turn away from the Dark Side together.

I guess I would be okay with both sides having both Chaos and non-Chaos rival factions. Anything that leads to in-fighting is okay in my book.


Our name is Legion because we are many….

All four of the Chaos gods of the Old World survived or maybe Slaanesh didn’t survive because of…reasons. On the moonless nights of the frontier, cultists offer sacrifices to the Drowned Lady. At least four or five of the elves twenty-two deities are now force for evil only. The Four Horsemen ride across the dark plains. The indigenous monsters of the New World pray to Great Wendigo and a dozen other dark spirits. .

There are so many that the most learned occult scholars and witch hunters can barely name half of the dark powers. With so many horrific spirits plotting destruction, what chance do the good folk have? Why hasn’t the Legion of Evil already destroyed everything? Because most of the dark lords can count the number of cells or cults they have on one hand. These varied cults are just as likely to pick fights with rival cults as they are to attack the so called good folk.

In a system like this, there are two ways you could go about building cells. One is to build a generic Chaos or dark power cultist cell template, then adapt it.

Generic Tempate

Melee Specialist: Generic Bruiser
Shooting Specialist: Generic Gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Generic Sneak
Magic User: Generic Wizard
Generalist: Daemon pretending to be a human Likely leader
Oddball: Who knows?


Vaul the Corrupt Builder

Melee Specialist: Generic Bruiser
Shooting Specialist: Gunslinger with really cool guns
Stealth Specialist: Generic Sneak
Magic User: Wizard that focuses on buffing allies’ weapons
Generalist: Cybernetically enhanced Daemon
Oddball: Warlock Engineer

Wendigo

Melee Specialist: Hairy Bruiser with sharp teeth and claws
Shooting Specialist: Generic Gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Generic Sneak
Magic User: Ice Shaman
Generalist: Hairy Daemon pretending to be a human
Oddball: Hungry Ghost

Tzeentch

Melee Specialist: Generic Bruiser
Shooting Specialist: Generic Gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Skin-changer
Magic User: Skin-changer shaman
Generalist: Daemon pretending to be a human
Oddball: Throwback to 8th edition such as Screamers or Pink Horrors

The Drowned Lady

Melee Specialist: Generic Bruiser that happens to be quite agile
Shooting Specialist: Generic Gunslinger. Just because the Lady is evil now doesn’t mean she stopped having derision for ranged troops.
Stealth Specialist: Water Walker
Magic User: Dark Priestess
Generalist: Daemon pretending to be a human
Oddball: Vengeful water elemental

Horsemen of Death (who may actually be on foot)

Melee Specialist: Blademaster
Shooting Specialist: Generic Gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Assassin
Magic User: Doom bringer
Generalist: Daemon pretending to be a human
Oddball: Undead of some sort


The other thought is instead of adapting a generic Chaos template but to take an existing template from a non-dark faction and darkify it.


Good Folk of the Land

Melee Specialist: Local strongman. Miner, rail worker, or lumberjack.
Shooting Specialist: Local Marksmen.
Stealth Specialist: Ranger/trapper
Magic User: Medicine woman.
Generalist: Local sheriff
Oddball: transplant from non-human group. Elf peddler, Dwarf tinkerer, Halfling sneak

Creepy Cannibals pretending to be Good Folk of the Land

Melee Specialist: Local strongman that looks really freaking scary!
Shooting Specialist: Local Marksmen wearing necklace of human finger bones
Stealth Specialist: Mancatcher
Magic User: Witch
Generalist: Local sheriff that is probably very good at looking completely nondescript
Oddball: Man partially beginning transformation into lesser Wendigo or some other monster. Maybe an actual monster like a Floating head kept in reserve.


One of Goldmann’s Bull Crews

Melee Specialist: Either human bruisers or Dwarfs with big pickaxes or hammers.
Shooting Specialist: Mercenary sharpshooter
Stealth Specialist: Mercenary Halfling sneak
Magic User: Mercenary wizard
Generalist: Pit boss, could be dwarf or human Likely group leader
Oddball: Steam punk engineers or demolition experts

One of Evil Vaul’s Bull Crews

Melee Specialist: Big guy with literal steal fists
Shooting Specialist: Sharpshooter with wicked looking rifle that requires regular infusions of blood.
Stealth Specialist: Sneaky guy who wears cloak of shadows.
Magic User: Warlock engineer
Generalist: Pit boss that is probably very good at looking completely nondescript.
Oddball: Very powerful demolitions experts with short life expectancies.


Typical Rango Team

Melee Specialist: Saurus Warrior or maybe Kroxigor
Shooting Specialist: Skink bowmen/gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Skink hunter
Magic User: Skink Shaman Likely group leader
Generalist: Saurus Hunter
Oddball: Beastmaster Skink and/or dinosaurs

Rango Team following corrupted Chotec

Melee Specialist: Saurus Warrior who really likes bloody trophies
Shooting Specialist: Skink bowmen with fireleeches attached to their arrows
Stealth Specialist: Skink arsonist
Magic User: Fire slinger
Generalist: Saurus Hunter
Oddball: Skink nicknamed “desert sun.” Not a full shaman per se, but Skink produces an area of effect which weakens enemies by mimicking the effects of heat stroke or dehydration.

Rango Team following corrupted Huanchi

Melee Specialist: Generic Saurus Warrior,Huanchi favors ranged combat and stealth, things Saurus don’t usually have.
Shooting Specialist: Really skilled Skink marksmen
Stealth Specialist: What Chameleon Skinks wish they could be
Magic User: Shadow Shaman
Generalist: Saurus Hunter
Oddball: Camasotz (humanoid Batman monster from Mesoamerican mysths), because they need to fit in somewhere.


If we opt for a smaller Rogues Gallery of Bigger Bads, they probably deserve their own team instead of variants of existing teams.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. I don't have a problem with four to five paragraphs of exposition for a literal god, but this is elegant in its simplicity and fits the theme to a “t.”

Speaking of elegant in simplicity, I guess the Four Horsemen makes a good setting appropriate Bigger Bad.

No one oohed and awed over my concepts of the Drowned Lady, a corrupted Vaul or Gmork (okay I kind of half-assed Gmork), and no one demanded we keep the original dream team of Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle, and Tzeentch.

Also since Y’ttar based the concept for Death off of something I wrote I can steal-claim his scribble-thing as my own.

For those who are old school (or want to use an existing mini for a conversion project) it would be very easy to say that Khorne is War, Slaanesh is Famine, Nurgle is pestilence, and Tzeentch is Death but the Four Horsemen work perfectly well without a nod to the Big Four of Chaos. For those who want to distance themselves from the old school Bigger Bads, it's perfectly acceptable to not include a tiny hint of the World that Was in portrayals of Wild West Daemons and their minions.


I was thinking of the iconic demons of Warhammer and I thought what I always thought. What was the pitch meeting like for Slaanesh? I don’t want to know. I try not to judge but lobsters? At least spiders have the metaphor of a spider woman being a dangerous seductress or a Black Widow who kills the males she sleep with. Hmm spiders and lobsters…

But anyway that got me thinking about this old meme.


We are not dealing with Slaanesh anymore we are talking about famine. So a good symbol for famine is a barren desert.


A barren desert with scorpions is even better. Besides a vulture, I am hard pressed to think of a better symbol for Famine.


Vultures are great. Vultures look really really gross. Their ecological is very very gross. Few things in nature are this well labeled.

Angry brown bears are scary but teddy bears are cute. Wolves are scary but wolf pups are cute. Raccoons, aka trash pandas, live gross lifestyles but kind of look adorable. Dolphins are cute and beloved, but if they truly have intellects approaching humans than they are murderous rapacious sociopaths.


Tangent over. Vultures can eat gross rotting carcasses because their stomachs acid is about as strong as battery acid. Nurgle wishes he could make acid like a vulture. Actually vultures are attracted to disease, they represent famine abstractly, they follow in the wake of big battles, and they feed off of death. They can fit in the entourage of any Horseman.

Maybe it is unnecessary to assign each Horseman a totem animal. War could maybe use a wolverine, coyote, wolf or wasp if we want to stick with a vermin motiff. Pestilence anything verminous, especially rats though that might step on the Grey Clad Stranger’s toes. I suppose there is already giant grotesque flies in Nurgle’s army, and giant flies work in a western setting. If Sotek doesn’t come back either in his original form or as Uktena or some other variant of the Horned Serpent, giving one of the Horsemen a snake as a mascot would be fitting.


Going back to @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl ‘s fantastic idea to organize Chaos cults like mob bosses. I figure most Daemons would wear big trench coats and keep their hat brims down low when keeping a low profile, but it’d be fun to make western bad guys who either slip up or decide to go all out with their powers and stop hiding.


So I’m thinking Famine Daemons would often be hiding Scorpion Tails, but the lobster like claws of scorpions would not be practical for operating firearms, so they'd have human-like hands. They would general be emaciated looking.


Pestilence Daemons could be hiding warts or boils. Or they could look emaciated like Famine Daemons. Famine and Pestilence are sisters after all so there powers and looks would have some overlap. While vultures could work for everyone I like the idea of vultures being Pestilence’s mascot animal. I could imagine Pestilence Daemons have mottled gross feathers and concealed raggedy wings which logically shouldn’t let a humanoid fly but do. And of course Pestilence Daemons would often have a bad-ass vomit attack. I think most Nurgle models would work as is if you gave them trench coats and cowboy hats.


I think War daemons would be the most human looking for who is more warlike the man? They might have crazy eyes or always bloodstained, or they could be the proud bearers of the Warhammer motif that “You can never have too many skulls!” I’m not opposed to less human looking War daemons with fur, fangs, and claws. I guess it’d be okay to give a Bloodletter daemon a cowboy hat and a six shooter, but I’m not sure I like the visualization as much as I like the idea of a Plaguebearer in Western garb. I really like the old concept where Nurgle Demons were the affable villains of Chaos, but I'm not sure that work with any of the Four Horsemen.

Death is pretty simple. Humans with skeletal hand and heads works. A grim reaper aesthetic works well too. If we opted to go for a snake motif, I think Death is the best one. The metaphor of the death rattle now becomes rather literal. Snakes might set the Daemons of Death apart from the Undead. I figure the Undead and minions of the Four Horsemen would be more likely to team up with each other than they would be likely to team up with the Orcs, Rangos, or railroad bulls, but they would still be rivals much of the time.


So as I just touched on. I would prefer there be an undead faction that is separate from the pseudo-Chaos faction of capital "D" Death. Maybe they could be rivals or allies. They could also be archenemies. After all, Death may not like undead things, Death may want the dead to stay dead.

But anyway, here is my thought for undead baddies that are not connected to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Vampires and necromancers. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So in this alternate setting, the Empire of Man was much stronger than in Warhammer 8th edition. That means the Vampire Counts wouldn’t be able to make as much headway. I briefly toyed with the idea of some vampires being allowed into the Empire, much how Balthasar Gelt briefly makes necromancy legal in the End Times series, but that makes writing the backstory a lot more complicated.

So here goes, when the Empire of Man was cementing their power, I figure they would defeat the leaders of the Von Carstein family that much faster. Many of the surviving vampires decided not to pick a fight with the Empire and they relocated to lands on the periphery of the Empire’s influence. Others opted to hide in plain sight masquerading as normal humans within the Empire itself. Sure. they had to kill a lot of people for blood, but its lot easier to hide when one isn’t commanding 10,000 undead minions.

Fast forward to the Great War Against Chaos. Maybe a few vampires sent their minions against the minions of Chaos, maybe they didn’t, but they generally weathered the storm with fewer casualties than the living. Mannfred Von Carstein figured with the vast majority of the Empire of Man dead and waiting to be raised into his army, this would be a good time to take over before they replaced their dead emperor and Elector Counts. He was wrong.

With the Chaos moon gone and in the wake of Khorne’s curse, magic waned very fast. Mannfred should have been able to raise an army numbering in the millions but he barely got more than hundred thousand and he lost about thousand soldiers to magical attrition with each passing week. Also, the surviving heroes of the Great Chaos War were not in the mood for undead shenanigans and having beaten Chaos were not going to surrender to a lowly vampire. In game terms, anyone who survived the Great Chaos War was basically immune to psychology forever and they weren’t going to tremble at a bunch of skeletons.

Worse of all, Mannfred Von Carstein went to a lot of trouble to steal Vlad’s magic ring to let him cheat death and the magic of that artifact was drained. Mannfred didn’t find that out till he died. At this point the surviving vampires mostly opted to lay low. The vampires didn’t have a group meeting or anything like that, most were solo acts but they generally came to the same conclusion. If the likes of Mannfred and Nagash cannot take over the world, I’d be stupid to try.

A long period of trial and error occurred where vampires had to relearn what they once took for granted. Vampires still were noticeably stronger and faster than the living. They still needed blood to survive. They still had a natural magical aptitude at least on par with living wizards, but much like the living, they had to make due with less godlike spells.

The biggest change is that they couldn’t mass big armies. The strongest vampires going to sites teeming with necromantic energies and waiting for the times of year where death energies flowed most freely could maybe raise an army of five or six thousand undead soldiers. At best most vampires could pull off a thousand on a normal day in a normal place. That’s enough to draw unwanted attention but not enough to defeat the larger armies of the Old World.

The surviving vampires opted to go for quality over quantity. A couple dozen competent undead capable of operating firearms and showing a degree of autonomy and problem solving skills were more useful than a couple hundred shambling minions. That’s not to say they never use shambling hordes of zombies, but they rarely keep standing armies. Vampires who are either confident or desperate will send hordes of zombies at people they want to die, but keeping a large standing army will only paint a target on his/her head. But if someone wants to make a story or game scenario where the Magnificent Seven fend off a hundred zombies attacking a small frontier town, why not?


Necromancers work too, either instead of or in addition to vampires. They would work much as they did before. They are simply mortals who delve into the magic of the dead. The only difference is that the Necromancers are weaker and working with much smaller hordes of minions than in yesteryear


Melee Specialist: half a dozen or more zombies. Maybe a ghoul or two. Alternatively a really big zombie like a bear or a Kroxigor.
Shooting Specialist: Wight marksman
Stealth Specialist: Wight assassin or skeleton thief
Magic User: Vampire or Necromancer
Generalist: Wight gunslinger (or vampire if Necromancer gets the magic user slot)
Oddball: Some incorporeal, either a ghost or living shadow.


I’m using wight in a very general sense. If a player wants wight to mean “free willed skeleton” than they can put skeletons in cowboy hats. If someone prefers their wights to look like gross zombies wearing tattered western garb that’s fine too. Another possibility would be mostly human-looking wights with maybe a somewhat odd skin coloration and they either have dark sunken eyes or creepy glowing red eyes.


Really there is little reason to go into detail to differentiate between wights, skeletons, ghouls, zombies, and whatnot. Basically there would be two categories. Autonomous and shambling undead. Autonomous undead would probably not be able to disobey or harm their master but they are not drooling puppets moaning for brains, they have their own working brains.

I don’t know what the magic system will look like exactly, but it would be feasible I think to summon may d3 zombies with a spell or special ability during a match.


Now that I reflect on it, having some overarching Big Bad or Bigger Bad over all undead or even over all undead in the West is unnecessary. I tried to come up with Western style undead villains or anti-heroes and they tend to be pretty small scale. My thought is the frontier would have disproportionately more undead than the civilized world because there is more empty space to hide their necromancy in. Here's what i got so far.


A claim jumping villain that steals lucrative gold mining sites and often enslaves the original claimants as undead miners. Supposedly all his autonomous undead were those who died due to gold madness. They neglected eating or hygiene to seek gold and died or killed themselves after failing to strike it rich. Or it could be an overblown cautionary tale.


An anti-hero like Richter Krueger and/or the Crow. The railroad bulls killed him and his family for refusing to sell his land. He was buried in a shallow grave but he rose again with the ability to animate a small band of corpses (not his family of course). He seeks vengeance against his killers and is rumored to be working his way up to Lordroid Goldmann himself who has put a large price on his head. But people die in situations like this all the time. Someone or something must have intervened to let this man rise from the dead, but who and why?


An Old World dandy vampire decides to go head out to western frontier, hoping he can avoid unwanted scrutiny far away from civilization, and chasing rumors of magical McGuffins that can let him attain magical power akin to what vampires had in the World that Was.


A vampire in need of some quick minions killed some greenskins and raised their corpses as minions, not realizing one of the orcs (or goblins if you prefer) was actually a shaman. With the weird willpower and adaptability greenskins are known for, the shaman turned wight broke free and developed necromantic powers of his own. Not known for subtlety, the greenskin necromancer has become a terror on the frontier raiding settlements for treasure and bodies.


A talented tinkerer has become terrified of old age and death. After trying to invent an alchemical or steam punk way to cheat death, he turned to necromancy. He is held together by a combination of steam punk cybernetics and necromantic magic, but he knows he cannot prolong death forever, so he directs his very well equipped and high tech minions to seize power wherever they can find it.


A vampire from out East tried to maintain a human façade and amass wealth and political power, but the Order of the Silver Hammer sniffed him out. Now he is going to try to be a big frog in a small pond. He took over a small frontier tier town, installed a wight sheriff and deputies to maintain order and essentially enslaved the living inhabitants.


An Old World vampire turned an Albion native into a vampire hoping to gain a catspaw among the various tribes, but the original Old World vampire either died or his thrall broke control. Now there is a wilderness savvy band of undead terrorizing Native and Old World settler alike.

 

I don't have a problem with the old school blood letter appearance but I think they would look better in the old west if they were charred and smoldering instead of cherry red.

Okay, flies for Pestilence, Vultures for Death

I am not sure about directly incorporating Hashut into the lore, but I do like the cyberpunk motiff. Thinking beyond Khorne, an avatar of War in the period between 1850 and 1900 would definitely want to include a reference to the modern weapons of the era. That was a major reason the American Civil War was magnitudes bloodier than America's previous wars. Gattling guns, rifled cannons, infantry weapons with repeating shots. While this wouldn't show on the table top, they should probably perpetually smell of gun powder.

I am inclined to agree with Y'ttar, but I think there are people who really like vampires. I thought the movie was campy but I genuinely enjoyed watching Abraham Lincoln fight vampires.

It's generally better to have option than to not have them, so people could choose whether they would want vampires or necromancers leading their undead bands.

As for the bloodline thing. 8th edition made it a point to de-emphasize the Bloodlines. I was never a huge fan of them to begin with. The way I see it, between the Chaos War and Mannfred's failed uprising, there wouldn't be enough vampires around to really support the notion of bloodlines.

The Enlightenment saw a reduction in the importance of noble blood lines and the Wild West is all about rugged individualism. There wouldn't need to be bloodlines. Just vampires.

Alternatively the most powerful surviving vampires that emerged after all the post-Chaos War chaos could declare themselves the first of new bloodlines and create new blood lines in their own image. Rather than figure out how the old school blood lines could adapt we could create new bloodline concepts more fitting to the New World.

-A bloodline that is stuck living in the past and wants to recreate Sylvannia in an isolated stretch of the western frontier
-A future minded bloodline that wants to combine blood magic and steam power
-A bloodline that is based on Albions or something other than humans.
-A bloodline obsessed with restoring magic to it's old strength and ruthlessly hunting down any magic boosting McGuffins (though every wizard of every faction would covet said McGuffins).

Pretending it wasn't a part of the Wild West would be a mistake. If this setting had a source book I would recommend a sidebar with a paragraph or two to acknowledge it's existence, then just steer clear of the subject on major story aspects.

If the Wild West had any vampires. At least one would use a brothel as a base of operations.

 

Vampires in the wild west...
Have you seen/read "Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter"?
Some nice inspiration there.

 

I saw the movie. Since I am taking this side project seriously, maybe I should look up the book too. The funny thing is the story premise isn't as ridiculous as it sounds.

Blood sucking vampires is a good metaphor for antebellum American slavery. And if you read a detailed biography of Abraham Lincoln, you would young Abe got in the fights and did a lot of dangerous things. If you are going to make a historical American president into a campy action hero, it's either Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt (and Roosevelt was fairly badass in a War of the World remake anime).

If I was instructing a team of sculptors to make models for this hypothetical game line. I would say, "The melee specialist for the People of the Land? I want him to at least vaguely resemble young Abe Lincoln with an ax!"

 

I think that was the cool thing about that story. It was fantastic and absurd, but it fit the real history astonishingly well.

 

I had two recent musings on the Wild West settings.

First, I was thinking about the Four Horsemen and wondering about War. Specifically I was thinking about cartoon and comic book portrayals of Ares. Sometimes Ares is the type to wade into battle and slaughter everything in sight but most of the time when Ares is shown by himself, his MO is to entice two sides to fight and then he steps back and makes popcorn to enjoy while watching the show.

Khorne and his minions seem to be more likely to choose to get their hands dirty. I think I like the idea of War daemons being a bit more manipulative and indirect. Not completely. They would be more deadly opponents if they were cunning enough to stab you in the back and bold enough to attack you head on.

Anyway, what level of the manipulative/aggressive continuum do you all think War should be?

Also. While there has been disinterest in recreating the American Civil War or even resistance to it. I think if War is a literal character in the setting, we need some kind of analog to the American Civil War, though it need not be based on north versus south or involve slavery.


The second thing I was thinking about I was thinking about Dark Sun Elves. Dark Sun was an old Dungeons and Dragons RPG setting based on a dystopian desert dominated setting. In the Dark Sun setting, elves are stereotyped as traveling merchants that run from city to city. They are widely distrusted because their reputation for scams is we lldeserved, but they tend to find the best wares, so few can afford to shut them out entirely.

This can work for the Wild West. Since the three elven nations have merged into one, being arrogant somewhat untrustworthy traveling merchants is a good amalgam of the High Elves and Dark Elves. Both the Dark Elves and High Elves loved the sea, so travel was something they had an instinct for and trade caravans were the ships of the old West. Also, traveling elf merchants seem like a reasonable way to make your fortunes in human-dominated lands. With the elves longer maturation time for children, humans would crowd out elves in terms of traditional family farms.

So I'm thinking there would be elves doing other things, but stereotypes usually exist for a reason so I like the idea of elves being disproportionately likely to take up a profession involving peddling.

 

That too, rifled everything. Forgive if my off the cuff knowledge is mostly from Civilization V's American Civil War scenario or for your next question, Wikipedia.

Gatling guns were patented in 1862, but only a tiny number actual saw use in battle during the American Civil War. They first started showing up on the battlefield in 1864, by which point the war was almost over.

I'm figuring a Warhammer world, weapons tech would be at least a decade or two ahead of where it was at the same point in history in the "real" world.

 

There are a lot of things I haven't pegged down yet for Rangos.

First off, I like to tell Westhammer stories that involve a lot of different cultures and people and I do not believe a Saurus or Kroxigor would very likely learn the language or culture of the milk drinkers enough to peacefully interact with them and strike deals.

Second off, I'm not 100% sure what the Saurus or Kroxigor would be like. I'm not even 100% there should be Saurus and Kroxigor in this setting.

Westhammer is an alternate universe, it's not the future of Warhammer the Old World. Not every detail from Warhammer the Old World needs to be intact.

So basically I'm using Warhammer the Old World as a baseline, but the Empire was not constantly fighting for it's very life and soul. Through diplomacy and brute force the Empire conquered, annexed or allied with almost every non-Chaos faction in the Old World and then the Grand Empire of Man essentially defeated Chaos.

Chaos did not die quietly. They caused a bunch of plagues, natural disasters and magical upheavals that literally reshaped the geography. The Grand Empire of Man split into several smaller nations but the competing nations were too depopulated and exhausted to mount major wars against each other (only brushfire skirmishes). They rebuilt their societies over the next few centuries. During this time, the Lizardmen were facing their own societal upheavals. On the plus side very few warmbloods were invading, but the net net of this is that while the Lizardmen were evolving into Rangos, the humans of the Old World did not see this evolution because they were too busy to send exploratory ships to Lustria or Naggaroth.

Also 99% of the Skaven died out (mostly due to mass infertility) and the survivors redefined their society and evolved again. Modern Rangos and Modern Skaven view the old stories about Lizardmen and Rat Men as vague legends.



I haven't figured out how Rangos reproduce yet. They probably don't spawn from pools anymore (and I may retcon that their ancestors never spawned from pools). If they were tied to specific blessed spawning pools, the milk suckers would have probably wiped them out by now by targeting their static pools.

They could have males and females and lay clutches of eggs similar to real world late era feathered dinosaurs. Alternatively, they could asexually reproduce and periodically lay eggs. They could still use spawning pools but the pools are not permanent. Maybe they put temporary blessings on ordinary bodies of water. Maybe the ancient spawning pools of yore were absorbed into the sky and new Rango tadpoles rain down at auspicious times.

I'm not even sure where Westhammer Rangos live. Pueblo style stone buildings? Mobile tent cities? Assimilated milk drinker style homes and farms? I'm not sure if the Slann are all dead, numerous but weakened, or limited to a tiny number of survivors. Without knowning what their society looks like, I'm not sure how Saurus and Kroxigor fit into Rango society. To brush it under the rug, I so far I have said "Saurus and Kroxigor very rarely leave their home communities."

I always say if the needs of a story are served by contradicting something in Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar rules to not hesitate to break the rules and norms. Which is odd that I feel constrained by a hypothetical totally imaginary game that probably will never exist.

I picture Westhammer being a Mordheim like tabletop game. Throw up some Western terrain pieces, saloons, stables, mines, railroad tracks etc and have competing teams fight over objectives or whatnot. I figure each "team" option would have at least six unit options. A melee specialist, expert shooter, generalist, magic user, stealth specialist, and an oddball that is truly unique to the team.

Compared to Mordheim, a hypothetical Westhammer game would lean towards shooting over melee. Given that the game would not be melee focused, I think it would be redundant to give the Rango's two melee specialists, Saurus and Kroxigor.

No game design is perfect. If we (or some other group of people creating Westhammer rules) I bet after playtesting it was revealed that Saurus are clearly superior to Kroxigor or visa versa. Thus competitive Rango teams would never include Saurus or Kroxigor characters. I think it would be better to just have Saurus or Kroxigor and not both. Alternatively, I suppose we could reinvent Saurus to make them smarter and more agile and give them a gun, so they can be the generalist while the Kroxigor is the melee specialist. For both aesthetics and story purposes, I'd rather the generalist be a Skink warrior than a Saurus warrior.

Most view the wars they fought the past wars as ancient history. Maybe ancient legends. Given the upheaval the "death" of the Chaos gods caused a lot of historical records were lost. Ancient Carthage and Ancient Rome were dire enemies but Tunsia and Italy don't have any bad blood today that I'm aware of.

There is a vague superstition that if large scale wars return, so will Chaos, so the powers that be have been reluctant to commit armies to war.

On a local level, Westhammer is only 10-30 years past the Hammerican Civil War. The Civil War was so bloody and costly that very few people want to see that kind of conflict again. I have not hashed out the details, but surely the conflict reached out to affect almost everyone, humans, elves, dwarves, rangos, orcs, etc.

Dwarves and goblins are probably openly antagonist to each other but neither side is calling for the outright extermination of the other (at least not out loud).[/QUOTE]

 

A thought occurred to me as I was pondering what Westhammer would look like on the table. Thematically, stealth should be an aspect of opposing matches but I don't know how that would work on a tabletop where all players can see all models.

@Warden , you are the resident expert on Mordheim. Is approximating stealth feasible?

 

My first thought was to homebrew a set of rules for Westhammer matches because I really like homebrewing game rule sets.

Though reviewing the Mordheim rules, it would be a lot easier to modify the Mordheim rules rather than invent something whole cloth.

So I guess Westhammer would drastically reduce the number of available armor and melee weapons and reduce their general effectiveness while greatly increasing the options and raw power of ranged weapons.



I think the existing rules for hiding in Mordheim are extremely limited. I pondered this and had the thought of adding a Stealth trait. I have the basic theory down but not the specific numbers.

Many characters would have a Stealth trait of 0, and many characters would have a Stealth of 1 or 2 which means Stealth is a last desperation ploy that probably won't work but you might get lucky. Most teams would probably only have one character option with a high Stealth rating but skaven and goblins would have high stealth all around.

A stealth roll of some kind would have a base difficulty modified by the availability of cover and and the distance to the nearest enemy. A failed Stealth roll means the character wasted his/her action. A successful stealth roll means that the character's model is pulled from the table and a counter is placed in their last spot representing that the character is "hiding."

A hiding character cannot attack or be attacked. You keep adding counters to the first counter until the player wants to make the hidden character reappear. They declare where they want the character to pop (within limits based on the character's movement) and then make another Stealth roll. If they succeed they reappear where the controlling player wants. If they fail the roll the opponent moves the reappearing player a number of inches equal to how badly the Stealth roll is failed.

Stealthy characters would have more options for initial deployment too, they could start out hidden, but again if they fail their Stealth roll to reappear their opponent can move them.

Characters could perform a "search" action based on Initiative (which seems to be the stand in for smarts and perception in Mordheim) to force a hidden character to pop up. A searching character would still be able to attack that round (allowing you to swing at or shoot at the would-be hider at least once before they disappear again) but would suffer a penalty to attack rolls (to prevent people from searching every round).


So for weapons I figure primitive weapons like throwing knives, bows, blowpipes, and crossbows would be generally inferior to Westhammer firearms, but they don't go "BANG." An attacker with a quiet weapon can make a Stealth roll in the same turn he fires (assuming the enemy is not face on when he gets shot).

There would probably be some variation but firearms would probably fit into four categories.

Buffalo rifles and other high powered rifles are move or fire but they get an accuracy bonus and do crazy damage weapons.

Repeating rifles, revolvers, or carbines do moderate damage and can be fired twice a round under most circumstances. But they are probably the most common weapons.

Primitive black powder weapons and cheaper modern weapons do moderate damage but can only be fired once a round. They would be the province of primitive teams with limited technology or melee characters that only want a firearm as a secondary option.

Deringers have poor range and damaging power but they could be fired out of sequence such as in response to being attacked in melee.

Of course there would be some super expensive high end weapons that are enhanced by magic or steam punk technology for extra damaging power, extra fire rate, or in rare cases enhanced Stealth.

Orcs and ogres (if they are included) would almost certainly lean towards high damage weapons.

Elves and the Order of the Silver Hammer would probably lean towards high accuracy weapons.

Dwarves would probably lean towards high fire rate weapons.

Rangos, Albion, or any other primitives would probably lean towards Stealth weapons.